


whenever i'm alone with you (you make me feel like i am home again)

by meregalaxiesandgods



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Attempted Sexual Assault, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, Multi, Prostitution, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, listen the karasuno first years are bffs in every universe I don't make the rules, oikawa is a bitch and Iwaizumi likes him so much, tobio: fuck, tobio: has feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:01:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 50,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27812704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meregalaxiesandgods/pseuds/meregalaxiesandgods
Summary: Tobio is a struggling university student, relying on his night job as a hooker to pay his tuition and to keep the lights on in his lonely apartment. A chance encounter with Oikawa and Iwaizumi changes his life, offering a chance at love—but Tobio’s past continues to haunt him, and may prevent him from grasping the happy ending finally within his reach.(An Iwaoikage soulmate AU that does in fact have a happy ending, I promise.)
Relationships: Background Tsukishima Kei/Yamaguchi Tadashi, Hinata Shouyou & Kageyama Tobio, Hinata Shouyou & Kageyama Tobio & Tsukishima Kei & Yachi Hitoka & Yamaguchi Tadashi, Iwaizumi Hajime/Kageyama Tobio, Iwaizumi Hajime/Kageyama Tobio/Oikawa Tooru, Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru, Kageyama Miwa & Kageyama Tobio, Kageyama Tobio & Tsukishima Kei, Kageyama Tobio & Yachi Hitoka, Kageyama Tobio & Yamaguchi Tadashi, Kageyama Tobio/Oikawa Tooru, background Hinata Shouyou/Kozume Kenma - Relationship
Comments: 296
Kudos: 817
Collections: Iwaoikage





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Please be warned that this chapter begins with a non-graphic description of attempted sexual assault on Tobio. If you don’t want to read this, I’ve marked the end of the scene with a *.

There were certain disadvantages to Tobio’s profession. And  _ this,  _ Tobio thought, was definitely among the worst of them. 

“Sir,” he said through gritted teeth, trying to bat the man’s hands away as they wandered along his hips. “We’re done here. Let me go.”

“No,” the man slurred, exhaling the warm scent of alcohol over Tobio’s neck. Tobio grimaced, turning his face away. “S’not true. I pay—paid for this.”

“You paid for a handjob,” Tobio snapped. “Which I gave you. Now—” He pushed ineffectually at the other man’s shoulders, trying to generate distance between them. He’d pinned Tobio up against the wall of the alley behind the hotel Tobio worked out of, and while Tobio was undeniably tall, the man still had about ten centimeters and forty pounds on him. 

“Come on,” the man coaxed, “such a pretty little thing . . . sht—st—stay a while.”

Tobio dodged a sloppy kiss, knocking his head into the wall behind him with a scowl. He craned his neck, trying to see over the man’s shoulder to the discreet back door that let out of the hotel. Where the fuck was security? Tobio was supposed to have a man nearby whenever he accepted a proposition—to prevent this exact scenario from happening. 

He could scream. That might bring security running. But it also might bring an innocent patron of the hotel running; or even worse, it might bring Shouyou running. Shouyou was on thin ice with their employer lately, after accidentally insulting a client one too many times, and if he ran out on yet another customer, he might actually get fired.

Shouyou couldn’t get fired. Shouyou needed this job, just as much as Tobio did. 

Tobio grit his teeth. It wasn’t the first time he’d needed to physically extract himself from a less-than-ideal situation, but he hated it every time. Violence was not his thing. Violence had never been his thing.

The customer muttered something under his breath, swaying further into Tobio’s space. Tobio braced his hands on the other man’s chest, working a leg in between them. He planted his knee in the other man’s stomach and shoved, sending the man stumbling away. 

“ _ Hey, _ ” the man protested. “You—you can’t jusshht—”

Tobio eyed him warily, sidling towards the door into the hotel. The man’s cash was burning a hole in his pocket. He was half-tempted to throw it on the ground in the other direction and make a break for it, but rent was due tomorrow and Tobio was barely going to make it as it stood. 

The man’s expression teetered between drunken confusion and rage as he regained his balance; Tobio held his breath, hoping he’d get lucky and confusion would win out—

“Whore,” the man spat, and lunged. 

Of course, thought Tobio. Because nothing could ever be easy. Kei was going to be furious with him when he showed up with bruises again: he said it made Tobio less attractive to customers, or whatever. He also said that he didn’t care if Tobio got hurt, but Tobio knew that wasn’t true because he had an expensive tin of balm with Kei’s name on it on his bathroom counter at home.

He dodged the man’s first blow, but was too slow to avoid the second, and a hand caught and twisted in the back of Tobio’s thin shirt. Tobio found himself yanked backwards, spun around, and pressed face-first against the alley wall. An involuntary yelp left him, which he bit down upon as soon as it passed his lips. He couldn’t risk Shouyou.

“Let me go,” he snarled, curling one hand into a fist. He threw an elbow backwards, swamped with a sick sense of satisfaction when he heard a pained grunt. A hand pinched down on the sensitive skin of his ribcage and he squirmed, trying to find the man’s foot with his heel. He was just considering biting at the invasive fingers that had wrapped around his jaw when the man’s oppressive weight vanished entirely, leaving Tobio gasping for air and dizzy. 

*

He spun, expecting security to finally have gotten their shit together and come to get him—but it was a stranger who stood in the alleyway with Tobio, one hand collaring Tobio’s customer as if he were an errant dog. 

“I think,” the stranger said calmly, and Tobio couldn’t see much of him in the dark except that he was a man, but he had a nice voice, low and deep and laden with purpose. “This young man asked you to let him go.”

“Fuck you,” the client spat, wriggling furiously but to no avail. Tobio’s erstwhile white knight had an iron grip. “You don’t—don’t undershhhtand. He’s a—”

“Yes, he’s a person who asked you to let him go,” came another voice, sugary sweet, and Tobio started; he hadn’t even seen the second person, also a man, until he’d spoken. The speaker stepped up to Tobio’s side, emanating a faint warmth in the chill of the night. Tobio fought the inappropriate urge to curl in closer. 

“Go away,” Tobio managed to get out. He couldn’t let his mysterious rescuers do all the work. “Or I’ll get security, and they’ll ban you for life.”

“Fine,” the customer spat. “You weren’t wor—worth—that good anyways.” 

His captor gave him a reprimanding shake, and then a not-so-gentle shove toward the exit of the alleyway. The customer went, with one last sneering look over his shoulder at Tobio. 

“Um,” said Tobio into the sudden silence. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” said the man who’d pried the client off Tobio, and it was a mystery to Tobio how someone who was so obviously commanding could also sound so gentle. “He was an asshole.”

“That he was, and other things besides,” muttered the second man, and laid a gloved hand on Tobio’s shoulder. Tobio barely repressed a flinch. “Here—why don’t we go into the light?” He steered them gently down the alleyway, opposite the direction Tobio’s departing client had gone. Tobio emerged, blinking, into the watery yellow glow of the streetlights that lined the city’s main avenues. 

He turned, and—froze. 

He was beautiful. Truly, they both were. The man who’d laid his hand on Tobio’s shoulder was tall and lean, with sideswept brown hair and glasses concealing brown eyes that glittered with fierce intelligence. The other man was slightly shorter, but broader in the shoulders, with spiky black hair and an understated confidence in his posture. 

Tobio felt a red flush crawling up his neck, and cursed his pale complexion. Hopefully they’d both think he was just stressed or overwhelmed. 

“I’m Iwaizumi Hajime,” said the shorter man. He jerked a thumb at his companion. “And this loser is Oikawa Tooru.” 

Tobio slanted a look at Oikawa, but he didn’t seem offended by being called a loser. He was even smiling slightly. 

“Kageyama Tobio,” Tobio said with a bow. “Iwaizumi-san, Oikawa-san. Thank you again.”

“Ah, it was nothing,” Iwaizumi said with an awkward chuckle, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. 

“It wasn’t,” Tobio said. He was very aware of how badly that could have gone for him. He gave them a once-over, thinking. He owed them both for what they’d done, but he had nothing to give. Nothing to give, except himself. He didn’t think they were the type to take offense at what he was about to offer—but if they did, Tobio wouldn’t be any worse off than how he’d started the night. 

“Do you want,” he said carefully, “to go back inside the hotel? With me?”

They both looked at him, but there was only blank incomprehension in their expressions. Tobio hunched his shoulders against a sudden gust of wind, shoving his hands in his pockets. “In the hotel,” he clarified. “Where I work.”

Still, nothing.

“You can have anything you want,” Tobio tried. “Free of charge. As thanks. I’ve been told I’m especially good with my mouth.”

It was this comment that made the penny drop: they both flushed red, even redder than Tobio had been. 

“Oh my gods,” said Iwaizumi, spinning around and putting his hands over his face. “Oh my gods.”

“Iwa-chan,” Oikawa shrieked, sounding half-amused and half-appalled. “He wants to fuck us!”

Wait. Tobio had meant it as a thank you, not as a come on. “That’s not—”

Iwaizumi spun back around, dragging his hands down his face. “Are you even legal?” he demanded. 

“I’m nineteen,” Tobio snapped, stung. 

“Great,” Iwaizumi said. “He’s nineteen!”

“Thanks for the offer,” Oikawa said, his lips curving up slightly. “But we’ll pass.”

“Oh,” said Tobio, feeling strangely disappointed. It wasn’t often that he desired a client, or even liked them, but these two—he might have, if given the chance. “Okay.” 

But neither of them left; they just stood there, staring at him, so Tobio pressed, “Are you sure? There’s nothing I can do for you? Nothing at all?” He slanted a gaze up at them through his eyelashes, a technique Hitoka had once called "irritatingly seductive."

“No-we’re-sure,” said Iwaizumi rapidly, as Oikawa said, “Actually. . .”

“ _ Shittykawa _ ,” Iwaizumi hissed. “You can’t—”

Oikawa held up a hand, something in his gaze that Tobio couldn’t identify, and Iwaizumi quieted. “Actually,” Oikawa repeated. “Come to dinner with us.”

“Dinner?” Tobio asked cautiously. It certainly wasn’t what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t the oddest request he’d ever gotten, either. 

Oikawa rolled his eyes. “That is what I said, yes.”

Tobio wormed his hands further into his pockets. He really did owe them. And if dinner was what they wanted, it was a pretty harmless request. He could swing it, if he ordered the cheapest thing off the menu and skipped breakfast in the morning. “Okay.”

“Just like that?” Iwaizumi said, raising one dark eyebrow. “Dinner with two strangers? We could be serial killers.”

Tobio frowned. “You’re not serial killers,” he decided. “You’re too nice. And besides, dinner with strangers isn’t much of a demand when I have sex with strangers for a living.”

Iwaizumi made an odd choking noise, turning around again. Oikawa laughed, full and bright and glad. “Oh, Tobio-chan,” he said, and his tone was so fond that Tobio forgot to take offense at the nickname. “You’re a riot.”

“There’s this little Western diner I’ve been meaning to try out,” Iwaizumi said stiffly, still facing away from Tobio. “It’s not far from here.”

“That’s fine,” said Tobio quietly. 

“Very well,” Oikawa said, and bowed from the waist like some lord in a royal court. “After you, Iwa-chan.”

The walk over was silent for the entire twenty minutes. Tobio found he didn’t mind it. Between Oikawa and Iwaizumi was not an uncomfortable place to be. 

In the diner, Tobio slid into one side of the booth while Oikawa and Iwaizumi occupied the other. He felt for a moment as if he were on trial, being judged—but the feeling fled as soon as Iwaizumi flashed a reassuring smile his way. 

“What can I get for you?” The waitress, notepad at the ready, had already adopted the thousand yard stare of retail workers everywhere. 

“Oh. Um.” Tobio fiddled with the sleeves of his shirt, dragging the material over his thumbs. “Just a water, please. And, uh, fries?”

“He’ll also have a burger,” Oikawa put in. “And a strawberry milkshake.”

“Oikawa-san,” Tobio hissed. “I can’t—”

“Our treat,” Iwaizumi said, after a long glance at Oikawa.

“But—”

“Now, now,” Oikawa purred. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to argue with your elders, Tobio-chan? It’s rude.” He swiveled back to the waitress, aiming a blinding smile her way, and proceeded to order for himself and Iwaizumi while Tobio pouted. 

Tobio huffed to himself, feeling put out for a reason he couldn’t even identify. He wasn’t trying to be rude. It was just that none of this made  _ sense _ , and Tobio hated it when things didn’t make sense.

He soon forgot to be upset, however, when the food arrived and Tobio found himself enjoying the best burger he’d had in years. “S’goof,” he said, sucking the milkshake down eagerly. He glanced up and saw that Oikawa was watching him, expression torn between amusement and disgust. 

“I’m . . . glad,” Oikawa said mildly. He picked up a knife and fork, wielding them as though they were a sword and shield. “So. Tobio-chan. As Iwa-chan here and I have done you the  _ immense _ favor of taking you out to dinner”—he dodged the slap Iwaizumi aimed at the back of his head with the ease of long practice—“it’s only fair you do something in return. Tell us about yourself.”

So Tobio told them. 

He told them, as he had previously, that he was nineteen and a hooker—but he was also a university student in his sophomore year, studying sociology. He lived alone. His best friends were his fellow hookers, and Tobio loved them dearly even if he didn’t always know how to say it. He’d wanted to play volleyball when he was younger but had never been able to get into the sport. He liked music and he loved cats but he hated the color yellow. His favorite food was pork curry.

In the course of the conversation, Tobio learned about them, too: that they were both in university as well, but both seniors. Oikawa was getting his degree in physics and Iwaizumi was getting his in sports science. They lived together in an apartment nearby. Iwaizumi took cold showers and Oikawa constantly made fun of him for it. Oikawa believed in extraterrestrial life. When they’d found him in that alleyway, they’d been heading home after seeing a movie about penguins. 

“Sounds interesting,” Tobio lied.

Oikawa narrowed his eyes at him, seeming to sense the falsehood. “Just because  _ you _ have no appreciation for the finer things in life—”

“Enough,” Iwaizumi said, pushing in between them. They were almost back at the hotel, the elder two having decided to walk Tobio back to his job just in case the overly-aggressive client from earlier was still around. “Oikawa, say goodbye. We have to get home.”

“Goodbye, Tobio-chan,” Oikawa cooed, trying to chuck him under the chin. Tobio recoiled with a glare and Oikawa only laughed. 

Then, as if someone had abruptly flipped a switch, Oikawa’s eyes went hard and glittering, his mouth firming into a grim line. “And remember to look after yourself. Nobody deserves to be treated like a plaything.”

“Yes,” Tobio said, unable to tear his gaze away from Oikawa’s strange intensity. He was mesmerizing like this. “I—I know.”

“Good.” Oikawa’s pleasant demeanor returned as if it had never left. He smiled at Tobio once more and then spun on his heel and began walking away, whistling. 

Iwaizumi cleared his throat and Tobio dragged his eyes away from Oikawa’s retreating figure, guiltily aware that he’d been staring. 

“It’s okay,” Iwaizumi said with a small smile. “Gods know I stare too. He’s . . . quite something.”

“Yeah,” Tobio muttered, ducking his head. He jerked up the next moment, though, because something soft and warm was being looped around his neck. 

Iwaizumi was close—mere centimeters away, as he wrapped his own scarf around Tobio. His eyes were intent, but his hands were gentle, and Tobio nearly stopped breathing at the butterfly brush of a knuckle against his cheek.

“I don’t need—” Tobio began.

“You were cold the whole night,” Iwaizumi said gruffly. “Just take it. Something—something to remember me by.”

Tobio relented, clutching the soft material in one hand. Truth was, he hardly needed the scarf to remember Iwaizumi—or Oikawa. How anyone could forget such surreal kindness was beyond him. 

“Goodbye, Kageyama.” Iwaizumi’s gaze lingered on his for a second longer than was appropriate before he turned away, and Tobio thought maybe he was not alone in feeling the strange sense of loss that was beginning to overtake him. 

“Goodbye,” Tobio said softly. How long he stood watching the darkness into which Oikawa and Iwaizumi had disappeared he couldn’t say, except that his fingers were numb by the time he fumbled his way back into the hotel. 

It was late enough that business was beginning to pick up, and the lobby was filled with prospective clients and roving hookers discreetly trying to make a catch. Tobio caught sight of Tadashi in the corner, flirting with a tall woman who’d laid her fingertips on the bare skin of his forearm. They made eye contact across the room, and Tadashi raised an eyebrow slightly:  _ you good _ ?

Tobio nodded. _Good._ And he was good. He felt full, for once, and with more than the food. He could try and snare another client tonight, but he was strangely reluctant. He didn’t want to taint whatever it was that he’d just experienced. 

Tobio threaded his way through the lobby, retrieving his coat from the rack by the front door. He was just shrugging it on over the gifted scarf when Hitoka ran in, flushed and sputtering apologies for letting in the cold air. 

“It’s fine,” Tobio grunted, trying to assuage the nervousness contorting her expression. It was sometimes a mystery to him how someone so anxious and prone to overthinking was so good at their shared line of work. Out of the five of them, she got the most extravagant tips. 

She looked up at him, then looked again, biting her lip. 

“Tobio?”

“Hm.”

“Did something happen?”

First Tadashi, and now her. Was Tobio wearing a sign on his forehead, or something? “I . . . went to dinner. With a couple of clients.”

She twisted her fingers together. “Dinner? Oh, that’s, um. That’s nice.”

Tobio shouldered the door open, remembering the warmth of Oikawa’s hand on his shoulder, the brush of Iwaizumi’s knuckle against his cheek. He shuddered, just a little bit, and rubbed one hand absently over his sternum. “Yeah. Yeah, it was.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I’d love a comment if you’re so inclined. :) I do have this entire story outlined, but I honestly have no idea as to when I will be posting the next few chapters, as I am but a humble college student trying to survive the interminable hell that is finals season.


	2. Two

Tooru had been awake for less than thirty minutes, and Hajime could already tell it was going to be one of  _ those _ days. 

After the third time Tooru slammed a cabinet door closed, Hajime put down the problem set he was trying to look over and sighed. “Tooru.”

“What is it, Iwa-chan?” Tooru flitted into his field of vision, dressed in one of Hajime’s shirts and a mismatched pair of socks. He was cradling a steaming cup of coffee in one hand. Without even looking, Hajime knew it would be so pale as to be near-white, laden with so much cream one could hardly call it coffee anymore. 

“Tooru.”

“It’s a fabulous day,” Tooru announced, flinging his free hand into the air in a gesture of abandon. “The sun is shining, the birds are singing—”

“ _ Tooru _ .”

Tooru sighed, and slumped into the chair opposite Hajime’s at the kitchen table. He set the coffee down and then pillowed his head on his crossed arms. Hajime waited. Tooru’s stubbornness and unwillingness to tell Hajime what was wrong were outweighed only by his need to be dramatic. He’d crack soon enough.

Two minutes. Five. Fifteen. Hajime picked his problem set back up.

“Iwa-channnnnn,” Tooru whined, pushing the coffee aside. “Are you mad at me?”

Hajime pressed his hand to his temple. “Shittykawa, what have I done recently to give you the impression that I’m mad at you?”

“Well . . . nothing,” Tooru admitted, biting his lip. “But last night . . .”

Ah. 

Hajime had been anticipating this conversation ever since leaving Kageyama Tobio standing on that street corner outside the hotel, looking bright-eyed and bewildered under soft yellow light. He picked up Tooru’s coffee and took a sip, making a face at the over-sweetness. “What about last night?”

“I invited a hooker to dinner with us,” Tooru blurted out. “And I don’t know why I did it.”

Hajime eyed him. “You did it because he looked sad and scared, and most of all like he needed a friend. You did it because you’re a good person, Tooru, and you like helping people who need it.”

“Maybe,” Tooru admitted, and Hajime rolled his eyes. One of Tooru’s many (many) character flaws was his adamant refusal to accept that he was a decent person. Hajime was working on it. They’d get there. One day. 

“But.” Tooru scrubbed his hands through his hair, mussing the soft brown strands. Irritatingly enough, they fell right back into an effortlessly attractive sideswept style. “But there was just something  _ about _ him, Hajime. He was . . . I  _ liked _ him.”

“So did I,” Hajime said. “After you left, I gave him my scarf.” He hadn’t wanted to give up that particular piece of information, knowing that Tooru was going to make merciless fun of him for it, but Tooru actually seemed genuinely upset over the whole thing. Upset enough that Hajime was willingly opening himself up to ridicule. 

“What?” Tooru screeched, shoving himself upright. “You gave little Tobio-chan your scarf?”

“You’re the one who invited him to dinner!” Hajime retorted immediately. 

“Aw,” Tooru cooed, expression going sly in the way that Hajime had a bone-deep mistrust of. “Does Iwa-chan have a crush?”

“‘Iwa-chan’ has nothing,” Hajime said. “Except the desire to  _ strangle you in your sleep _ .”

“Okay, geez,” Tooru mumbled, slumping back down onto the table. 

Hajime eyed him a moment longer, then sighed. “You’re right. There was something about him.”

Tooru peeked up at him through his lashes, and Hajime stood to round the table. He petted one hand through Tooru’s hair, drawing the other man’s head up gently by the nape of the neck. “It’s okay. Whatever you’re feeling about Kageyama, it’s okay. I feel the same way.”

“Do you think,” Tooru said softly. “Do you think—”

“Maybe,” Hajime said. “And if so, we’ll know soon enough. Fate isn’t to be denied.”

Tooru leaned his head into Hajime’s palm then stood, crowding Hajime against the kitchen table. 

“Tooru,” Hajime warned. “I have class in half an hour.”

“Yes,” Tooru murmured, leaning close enough that Hajime felt his soulmate’s breath ghost over his lips. “But you have me right now.”

Hajime rolled his eyes, and though he fought the shiver that rocked through him at those words, leaned up to accept the kiss anyways. 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Fuck,” said Tobio. 

Another textbook slipped out of his arms, landing on the grass with a dull thump. 

“ _ Fuck _ ,” said Tobio. He slipped his toe under the first book he’d dropped, trying to pick it up with his foot and somehow maneuver it back into his still-full hands, but all that did was unbalance him further. He teetered on one leg for a brief moment, and then his natural athleticism failed him, and he went tumbling to the ground after the three books he’d already dropped. 

Well. At least the grass was comfortable. 

Tobio spread his arms like a starfish, scooping the dropped textbooks back into his arms. He piled them onto his chest, then relaxed, laying his head back on the ground. Spread-eagled in the middle of the campus’s main green wasn’t the way he’d pictured his afternoon going, but he did have forty-five minutes before his next class. He contemplated taking a brief nap: he’d been up late last night, and was fairly confident nobody would disturb him if he did fall asleep. Napping was considered sacred on college campuses, and Tobio had walked right by people passed out in weirder places without even a second thought. 

Of course, he could get started on that essay he had due for his Gender and Society class—but he could already feel his eyes drifting shut. His sleep deprivation, at least today, was less a function of his job (his shift at the hotel had ended at eleven, which was appallingly early by Tobio’s standards) and more the result of lying sleepless in his bed, staring at the ceiling and feeling oddly off-kilter.

Tobio could not escape that night in the alley, and what had happened after. A week had passed since his encounter with Oikawa and Iwaizumi, but the interaction remained painfully fresh in his mind. The two men haunted his sleeping moments, and most of his waking ones, too. There had just been something about them that had captivated him: maybe Iwaizumi’s gruff kindness and protective drive, maybe Oikawa’s quicksilver mood changes, the way he swung between playful capriciousness one moment and steel-eyed certainty the next.

Whatever it was, Tobio kind of hated it. Just a little bit. It had been distracting him all week: with his clients, in class, even with Shouyou and the others, who were beginning to suspect that something was up and were interrogating him accordingly.

But Tobio’s hatred of the enigmatic quality that had so drawn him to Oikawa and Iwaizumi was far outweighed by Tobio’s sheer, shameful, desperate desire to experience it again. He’d taken to loitering in that fateful alleyway at the same time every night, hoping,  _ wishing _ , for a glimpse of either man or both. Every night, he worked himself up into a painful state of anticipation, heart in his throat and hands clammy. And every night, his hopes were dashed. 

That didn’t mean that Tobio had given up on seeing them again. Kei had once told him he was like a dog after a bone when he wanted something. He hadn’t meant it as a compliment; Tobio had taken it as one anyway. If anything, Tobio’s continued disappointment only made him even more determined. It was a wild promise to make, but Tobio had vowed to himself that he’d see Oikawa and Iwaizumi again, even if he had to linger in that alleyway every night for the rest of his life. 

Tobio shifted uncomfortably on the grass of the green, grimacing as a stone dug into his back. He’d thought this was going to be much more comfortable than it was turning out to be. He sat up and opened his eyes, intending to take off his jacket and use it as a pillow.

At first, when he saw them, he honestly thought he was hallucinating from lack of sleep. It was every waking dream he’d had over the past week: a broad-shouldered man striding down the path adjacent to the green, his taller companion dogging his heels with wild gesticulations. 

Surely not, Tobio thought, half-hysterical, because he had been seeing Oikawa and Iwaizumi in every stranger lately.

_ Surely _ not.

But as the duo drew closer, it was undeniably them. Early afternoon sunlight glinted off the dark gloss of Iwaizumi’s hair and the round frames of Oikawa’s glasses. They were in perfect lockstep with each other; even their arms swung back and forth to the rhythm of the same silent tune. 

Tobio’s first instinct was to spring up and wave, and hope that they remembered him and waved back. Perhaps they could have a conversation—just a small one. Tobio would settle for a question about how his day was going.

Tobio’s second, much more powerful instinct, was to run away as far and as fast as he could. 

Tobio went to considerable lengths to keep the two halves of his life separate from one another. He was a student. He was a hooker. These two things did not,  _ could _ not, overlap. His night job wasn’t exactly legal, and his standing at the university was already tenuous enough. Tobio wasn’t stupid—he  _ knew _ he wasn’t—but school had always posed a difficulty for him. He had problems focusing if the subject material didn’t particularly interest him, and sometimes when he was trying to read, the words jumped around on the page like they had minds of their own. 

A better student than Tobio might only receive a stern talking-to from the administration if the university found out about his extracurricular activities. But Kageyama Tobio, nothing and nobody special, would be out on his ear. 

Tobio didn’t want to be kicked out of university. He’d barely passed the entrance exam in the first place, and this was his chance. His chance for an education, to make something more of himself than his father and his uncle and his aunt had ever believed he could be. 

All of his caution, Tobio thought bitterly, and it could be undone by a single stroke of bad luck. He’d deliberately chosen to work at a place on the opposite side of the city from campus, and he never picked up clients who looked around his age, lest they were students. And yet, Tobio hadn’t thought to ask Oikawa and Iwaizumi at which university, exactly, they were pursuing those degrees in physics and sports science. 

He didn’t truly think that either of them were cruel enough to spill his secret on purpose. But all it would take was one careless slip of the tongue, one too-loud remark in front of another student, or even worse, a professor—

Tobio shuddered. He’d worked too damn hard to watch everything he wanted fall apart in front of him because of one stupid mistake. So even though everything in him was urging him to stand, to call the upperclassmen over and bask in the warm glow of their attention, he didn’t. He hid instead. 

The green was bordered on all sides by large hydrangea bushes. Tobio was close enough to one that it wasn’t a hardship to gather his textbooks back into his arms and sidle behind it, crouching down so not even the top of his head poked out. The bush blocked him from the view of anyone on the adjacent footpath. In wistful silence, Tobio watched as Oikawa and Iwaizumi passed, bantering back and forth. Iwaizumi was berating Oikawa about something—having a better sleep schedule, or eating more healthfully. 

Tobio clutched his books to his chest. He hated the feeling of being so close and yet so far at the same time. And on top of that, he’d have to be careful around campus from now on, to make sure they didn’t see him.

Whatever the difficulties, however, Tobio had never been one to give up easily. He might not ever be able to interact with Oikawa and Iwaizumi as a student, but the alleyway outside the hotel was Tobio’s territory alone. Were they to come back that way again, Tobio would be waiting.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A week later, Tobio was willing to swear that the universe itself had something against him. For all his grand plans of avoiding Oikawa and Iwaizumi on campus, circumstances had engineered themselves so that it seemed Tobio was running into them every other time he turned around. 

He’d never seen either of them before that night in the alley; yet somehow, Tobio had encountered either one of them or both five separate times in the last seven days. 

The first time had been that non-experience on the green. 

The second time had been in the dining hall. Tobio had been forced to cut the sandwich line in order to avoid Iwaizumi, who’d been sitting at a corner table with a pink-haired upperclassman with a nose ring. He’d gotten multiple dirty looks for that little maneuver.

The third time, it had been Oikawa in the gym. Tobio had walked in, intent on getting some cardio in, had seen Oikawa doing squats, and had walked back out. (As it happened, Oikawa had really good form.)

The fourth time it was Oikawa again, sprinting full-out down one of the paths that connected the Engineering and the Aerospace buildings. That wasn’t even anywhere near Tobio’s department. He’d only been taking a shortcut to get to the counselor’s office. And yet he’d had to dive behind a tree to avoid Oikawa and his headlong rush as he hollered at other students to  _ get out of his way, move, this is important.  _ Tobio had never even figured out what that was all about. 

And all of that led to now, time number five, with Tobio crouched in the darkness of the library’s deepest stacks, feeling ridiculous and humiliated and more than a little bit like he was going to throw up. 

He wished Shouyou were here. Shouyou was good with people in a way that Tobio was undeniably not, and could talk himself out of anything. Tobio, on the other hand, had seen Oikawa and Iwaizumi enter the building, promptly dropped his books on the floor and fled—but instead of going up and out of the library, he’d gone down. Down into the basement, where it was smelly and dark. 

Tobio turned his ancient phone on, checking the time. It had been twenty minutes since he’d rushed down the stairs. Surely, Oikawa and Iwaizumi would have settled into a study spot by now, or else gotten what they’d come for and left. If it was the former, Tobio would just have to sneak out behind them somehow.

Relying on the light from his phone, Tobio fumbled his way out of the narrow gap between two shelves and into a broader corridor. He took two steps forward, and bumped into something that was decidedly not another shelf—it was warm, and breathing, and seized him by the wrist before he had time to shout. He found himself being bundled backwards, as whoever had him seemed to have a much better grasp of his surroundings than Tobio did, and pressed up against the stack he’d just emerged from. 

“I thought that was you,” a voice said, honey-sweet and familiar. Another phone light blinked on. Tobio stared up into unfathomable brown eyes behind round-rimmed glasses. 

“Shittykawa,” another voice snapped, and oh gods, this one was familiar too. “Let him go. Look at him, you scared him!”

“I’m n-not scared,” Tobio stuttered. And he wasn’t. He was utterly terrified. His heart beat against the inside of his ribcage with a staccato intensity.

Oikawa released him, but didn’t step back. He remained in Tobio’s space, something in the set of his mouth disappointed and almost—wounded?

“I thought that was you,” he said again, quieter. “Care to tell us why you’ve been avoiding us, Tobio-chan?”

Tobio swallowed. “I—I haven’t.”

“Liar,” Oikawa snapped. “Iwa-chan saw you in the dining hall, and you cut the line to get away from him, and I saw you when I was turning in my thesis proposal, and you practically dove behind a tree!”

“Thesis proposal?” Tobio asked blankly. So that’s what that had been about.

Oikawa hissed through clenched teeth. “That wasn’t the important part of that sentence, Tobio-chan.”

Right. The important part of that sentence had been that Oikawa and Iwaizumi had  _ seen him _ , on campus, and worse, they were now right in front of him, with undeniable proof that he was a student at their university. The wave of fear that swamped him was dizzying in its intensity, and Tobio bit his lip against the darkness that was encroaching on his vision. 

“Please,” he blurted out, grabbing the front of Oikawa’s shirt with one hand. “Please don’t tell anyone.  _ Please _ .”

Oikawa drew in a startled breath. Tobio felt the muscles in his chest jump beneath his hand. “W-what? What are you—”

“Tobio,” Iwaizumi cut in, with infinite patience. “Have you been avoiding us because you were afraid we’d tell somebody here about your, ah. Extracurricular activities?”

Tobio lowered his eyes. “Yes,” he said miserably. “Not—not on purpose, but . . .” In Tobio’s experience, people who had any kind of power over others were likely to abuse it. And if they didn’t abuse it, then they were careless with it. Which was arguably worse. 

“Oh,” Oikawa said softly. He gently pried Tobio’s hand off his shirt, and Tobio took the offending limb back with a flush. “We won’t tell. I promise.”

“Okay,” said Tobio. “Um. Thanks. It’s just that the university would kick me out. If they knew.”

“See?” Iwaizumi said. “I told you there was a reasonable explanation, Crappykawa.” To Tobio, he added, “This idiot got it into his head that you were avoiding us because you didn’t like us, or something.”

Tobio shook his head fervently. “No! I like you. I liked . . . dinner.”

Internally, Tobio winced. That had sounded absolutely awful. Once again, he wished Shouyou were here with him, if only so he could use the other boy as a distraction and sprint away from this conversation before he could embarrass himself further. 

“Of course you did,” Oikawa chirped, seemingly having regained his good spirits. “Who wouldn’t like me?”

“Plenty of reasonable people,” Iwaizumi grumbled, pushing Oikawa out of the way and ignoring his ensuing squawk. “Here you go.”

Tobio held out his hands automatically, surprised when he felt a substantial weight dropped into them. 

“Your books,” Iwaizumi said. “You left them behind.”

Oh. Right. Left them behind, when he’d run out of the library’s lobby like he’d been lit on fire. “Thanks.”

“No problem. I couldn’t help but notice that you’re reading Ryle’s  _ Questioning Gender _ ?”

“Um, yeah. For Gender and Society with Professor Suzuki.”

Iwaizumi’s teeth flashed white in the faint light of Tobio and Oikawa’s phones. “I took that class last year as an elective. It was pretty difficult.”

“Yeah,” Tobio nodded. “We just got our first essay assigned. I started it, but . . .” He knew it wasn’t very good at the moment. He was planning on begging Hitoka to look over it when he saw her later. 

“I could look over it for you. But only if you want,” Iwaizumi added in a rush. 

Oikawa leaned on his friend’s shoulder, wrapping a proprietary hand around his bicep. “Iwa-chan here is a tutor. He’s very good at it. You should definitely take his help.”

“I’m okay at it,” Iwaizumi said, blushing.

“Yes,” Tobio said. He didn’t really care if Iwaizumi was the worst tutor on the face of the planet. “That would be nice.” He fidgeted on his feet, hoping the pounding of his heart wasn’t audible to anyone else. 

“Great,” said Iwaizumi, and he actually sounded like he meant it. “Here, give me your phone. I’ll put my number in and we can arrange a time.”

Tobio handed the device over silently, doing his best not to shake when Iwaizumi’s fingertips brushed his. He received his phone back in short order, along with an easy grin. 

“Alright then, Kageyama. See you later?”

“Sure,” Tobio said. “Goodbye, Iwaizumi-san, Oikawa-san.”

He watched their retreating backs until the glow of his phone screen dimmed. And then he pressed his head against his books, letting out a drawn-out groan. Tobio had no idea what was going on, why Iwaizumi and Oikawa seemed so interested in him, or why he felt so uncomfortably sweaty whenever he was around them, but there was one thing he knew for sure: he was so, so fucked. 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Something happened,” Shouyou announced, two seconds after Tobio walked into the room at the hotel that was set aside for use by the five of them. 

“Something’s always happening with you,” Kei said. “Kindly stop shouting about it.” 

“No! Not with me,” Shouyou said. “With Tobio. He’s smiling.”

“I’m not smiling,” said Tobio, smiling.

All four occupants of the room swiveled to look at him. 

“I hate to say it,” Tadashi said. “But you are. Smiling, that is.” He set down the stick of kohl he was using to outline his eyes in heavy black makeup.

“Oh, gods,” Kei said, peering at him. “He is. Who died?”

“Nobody,” Tobio snapped. “I’ve—I’ve just—” He sighed heavily. If he didn’t spill now, there would be no end to the questions. “I’m going to meet an upperclassman tomorrow, and he’s going to look my essay over for me.”

“That’s it?” Kei muttered. Tobio ignored him.

“Oh,” said Hitoka, perking up. “That one for your Gender and Society class?”

“Yeah.”

“Oooh,” Tadashi teased. “An upperclassman, huh?”

“It’s not like that!”

“It’s okay if it is. You can always come to me for dating advice,” Tadashi said. 

Tobio sighed. He would, if there was anyone he was actually dating. Despite both being Unmarked—a small fraction of the population without soulmarks—Tadashi and Kei were one of the healthiest couples Tobio had ever seen. They had chosen each other as teenagers and been together ever since. 

“Do not ever come to me for dating advice,” said Kei.

Tobio stuck his tongue out at him. “Wasn’t planning to, asshole.”

“Brat,” said Kei, at the same time Hitoka said, “Be nice.”

Tobio sat down in a chair in front of the mirror, pulling a tube of concealer out of his bag. He made eye contact with Shouyou in the reflection.

“Hey Bakageyama,” Shouyou said with a grin. “Bet I make more money in tips than you do tonight.”

Tobio bared his teeth at him, feeling the competitive desire to win flare in his chest. “You’re on, idiot.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you that haven't yet been to/didn't choose to go to college: yes, napping is indeed sacred on college campuses. Did I once see a guy asleep on top of a fridge at a frat house at 3pm? Yes. Did I mind my business? Also yes.


	3. Three

The problem with Shouyou, Tobio thought, is that he never knew when enough was enough. 

Tobio had told him, hadn’t he? He’d flat out said:  _ you should be done for the night _ . 

But Shouyou, who’d been a few thousand yen short of making a hundred thousand for the week, had just grinned and claimed he could handle it. 

And that had been that. Tobio couldn’t have stopped him short of bodily locking him in the hotel prep room, but he’d made it clear that he didn’t like how tired Shouyou was, and he didn’t like the look of Shouyou’s final client either. 

Tobio had a decent gut instinct. Most people in his profession did—they had to, in order to guard themselves against the creeps. Something about Shouyou’s client had put him off immediately: maybe the flatness in his eyes, devoid of that simple spark of life that most people seemed to have; maybe the way one hand had slipped under Shouyou’s shirt even before Shouyou had taken him inside a room.

Shouyou, on the other hand, was too trusting. Tobio knew he should’ve locked him in the prep room no matter how much he would’ve complained. Avoiding Shouyou’s whining wasn’t worth this. 

Nothing was worth this.

“Tobio,” said Hitoka. “Here.”

Tobio turned his head and found Hitoka standing over him, offering a milk box from the vending machine in one hand. He took it numbly, and stuck the straw in through the top with shaking fingers. 

“Tobio,” Hitoka said again. She sat down next to him in one of the white plastic chairs the hospital offered in its waiting room, and took his free hand. “It’s not your fault.”

“I told him,” Tobio said, suddenly furious. “I told him not to do it, I said I didn’t trust that client, and now—”

“I know,” Hitoka sighed, looking drawn and tired under the hospital’s unforgiving fluorescent lights. “But, Tobio. Shouyou’s a grown man. And since when has he ever listened to any one of us when he gets an idea in his head?”

“Never,” Tobio admitted. 

“That’s right. Never. So you can stop blaming yourself.”

Tobio took a resentful sip of his milk, and tried not to think about how bright the blood had been against the unnatural paleness of Shouyou’s skin. “Security should’ve been there faster.”

On Tobio’s other side, Kei let out a disdainful snort. “Of course they should’ve. But you know the boss doesn’t really give a damn about us. We’re just a means of profit to him.”

That had been made abundantly clear. When security had finally wrenched the door to Shouyou’s room open in response to the other man’s yelling, their boss’s first concern had not been for Shouyou’s wellbeing—no, it had been for the client’s. The client, who had just finished smashing an empty wine bottle over Shouyou’s head. 

Then their boss had apologized to the  _ client _ , and threatened to fire Shouyou for “being a disagreeable whore.” The only thing that had stopped him was Tadashi declaring that if Shouyou went, so did he; and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that Kei would follow Tadashi anywhere, and Tobio and Hitoka would more than likely be right behind them. Faced with losing five of his employees instead of just the one, their boss had relented and agreed to allow Shouyou to stay on.

That did not mean that he had been helpful, in any way, shape, or form. No. It had been Tobio who’d scooped a barely-conscious Shouyou into his arms and carried him out of the hotel, Hitoka who’d offered the use of her beat-up Honda to drive them all to the hospital, Tadashi who’d laid his jacket down on the car seat to prevent blood from staining the leather, and Kei who’d held towels to Shouyou’s head to try and staunch the bleeding. 

That, at least, was a lesson that Tobio had learned long ago: most people were shitty and selfish. Few and far between were those who actually cared about people other than themselves. Tobio could name the people he trusted on one hand, and three of them were sitting next to him. The fourth was getting a row of stitches in his forehead. The fifth was in prison. 

Tobio’s phone buzzed in his pocket and he set down his empty milk box to fish it out. His heart sank when he saw the message on the screen. It was from Iwaizumi, reminding him of their tutoring session that was scheduled at ten, in half an hour. 

Tobio had been seeing Iwaizumi twice a week for three weeks now. Those first two sessions had been solely dedicated to his essay for Gender and Society, but Tobio had managed to enlist his upperclassman’s help in his Social Statistics class as well. After all, Iwaizumi was good at explaining everything, not just essay writing. And, Tobio would admit—if only to himself—that he liked spending time in Iwaizumi’s presence. Iwaizumi was patient, and he was kind, and he was clever, and he had the  _ nicest _ eyes.

Tobio was sad to miss a session, but he couldn’t go, not with things as they were. Shouyou needed him. He tugged his hand gently out of Hitoka’s and gestured at his phone. “I have to make a call.”

She let him go and Tobio stepped outside, shivering slightly. He wrapped his scarf (Iwaizumi’s scarf, his brain supplied) a little tighter around himself, and dialed. 

Iwaizumi picked up on the second ring. “Kageyama? Is everything okay?”

“I—” Tobio cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Iwaizumi-san, but I won’t be able to make our tutoring session today.”

“That’s alright. It happens.” A long pause. “If you don’t mind me asking, why not?”

Tobio bit his lip. Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes. He was afraid that if he tried to explain, he’d start crying for real—but he also didn’t want to lie to Iwaizumi, who’d been so helpful to him. “I’m at the hospital.”

“What!”

Too late, Tobio realized how that could’ve been misinterpreted. “No! Not me. Well, I am at the hospital, but not because of me. It’s . . . one of my friends. One of the people I work with. A client got aggressive with him and . . . I told Shouyou not to go with him!”

The last part came out as a near-sob and Tobio took a deep breath, trying to control himself. Iwaizumi would think he was weak and pathetic if he started crying like a child over the phone.

“Kageyama.” Iwaizumi’s voice grounded him back in his body. “Are you at Mercy Hospital?”

Tobio nodded, then remembered Iwaizumi couldn’t see him. “Yeah.”

“Are you alone?”

“No . . . my other friends came too.”

“How many?”

“Three.”

“Okay. Do you like curry?”

“Only if it’s pork. Wait, why—”

“Just hang in there, Kageyama.” Iwaizumi’s tone was impossibly gentle. “I’ll see you soon.”

“But I can’t make the tutor—”

The line went dead. Tobio pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it in confusion. Perhaps he’d heard wrong. He must have; Iwaizumi’s parting comment didn’t make any sense otherwise. Deciding he didn’t have the mental energy to try and puzzle it out, Tobio pocketed his phone and went back inside. 

The others were where he’d left them, except that Tadashi and Kei were now holding hands with a white-knuckled intensity. Tobio stopped dead, heart in his throat. “What is it? What happened?”

“Twenty-two,” Kei spat. “Twenty-two fucking stitches. If I ever see that piece of shit client again, I swear—”

“The nurse came out,” Tadashi said, his face a picture of marbled calm. Tobio knew better than to mistake that calm for peace. Rare as it was, Kei’s anger burned bright and hot and fleeting. Tadashi’s anger, on the other hand, was slow and patient, and therefore infinitely more dangerous. He was like a smoldering fire that suddenly flared to life: he put up with a lot, until someone crossed a line, and then he didn’t. “She said they had to put Shouyou under for the last few stitches. He was moving around too much. But the good news is that we’ll be able to take him home with us tonight once he wakes up.”

“Oh.” Tobio swallowed. That was better news than he’d been allowing himself to hope for. “Does he have a concussion?”

“Most definitely,” said Tadashi. “But there’s no permanent damage. They did a brain scan to confirm. He’ll just have to take it easy for the next few weeks.”

Tobio snorted. “Yeah, right.” Shouyou had never once ‘taken it easy’ in his life. 

“Lucky,” Hitoka murmured, curling into herself. “We got so lucky.”

Tobio sat back down in his seat. Most of the time, he didn’t mind his job. It was a necessity, and he earned money in exchange for a service the same as most other people did. He wasn’t ashamed of what he did to survive, and he wasn’t ashamed of himself for surviving.

But there were times—when a client got entitled, or wouldn’t take no for an answer, or  _ smashed a fucking wine bottle over someone’s head _ —there were times that Tobio hated his job with an unrelenting fervor, and would have burned that hotel to the ground for half a meatbun that had been scraped off the sidewalk.

“Hey,” Hitoka said, after some time had passed. “Isn’t, um. Isn’t that your tutor?”

Tobio frowned without looking up. He assumed that she meant ‘wasn’t,’ as in ‘wasn’t that your tutor’ who he’d stepped out to call earlier. “Yeah. I had to cancel our session for tonight.”

“Oh,” Hitoka said. “That’s a little odd, then.” 

“What is?”

She pointed across the hospital’s waiting room. “Well . . . that man right there looks an awful lot like that picture of him you showed us.”

What was it that Iwaizumi had said, again? _ I’ll see you soon.  _ Tobio jerked his head up, eyes wide. 

It was indeed Iwaizumi who’d just stepped in through the hospital’s sliding glass doors. Tobio recognized the strong line of his shoulders, emphasized by a tight long-sleeved shirt that clung to the muscles in his chest and arms. 

Iwaizumi scanned the waiting room, his eyes coming to rest on Tobio and lighting up with recognition. Tobio jumped to his feet. “I-Iwaizumi-san!” 

“There you are, Kageyama.” He started towards Tobio with long strides, the plastic bags in his hands swinging with every step.

“I don’t . . .” Tobio trailed off, confused. “I don’t have my stuff for tutoring.”

Iwaizumi gave a loud snort. “I’m not here for that, Kageyama.” He placed the bags down in the empty seat on the other side of Hitoka, giving her a cordial nod. Then he began to unload the bags, removing box upon box of takeout. One of them he spared a brief glance at before handing it directly to Tobio. Tobio accepted it automatically. When he pried open the top, the sweet scent of pork curry wafted out on a cloud of steam. 

Tobio looked at Iwaizumi, utterly at a loss. “For me?”

“Yep,” Iwaizumi said, popping the p. “When Tooru tore his ACL three years ago, I was so worried about him that I didn’t leave the hospital to eat for about twenty straight hours. I assumed you’d be the same way with your friend who got hurt. You haven’t already eaten, have you?”

Tobio shook his head silently, hands clutched tight around the pork curry. Iwaizumi extracted another takeout box and handed it to Hitoka, who took it as if it were a precious artifact. “I didn’t know what the rest of you liked, so I just got a little bit of everything. Hope that’s okay.”

“It’s-more-than-okay-thank-you,” Hitoka blurted out. “But, Iwaizumi-san, we can’t pay you back right now . . .”

He shrugged, folding his arms across his chest. “My treat. Don’t worry about it, ah—”

“Yachi Hitoka,” Hitoka said shyly, standing to take his hand. “But you can call me Yacchan, if you like. You’ve earned it; you’re the reason Tobio doesn’t ask me for help on his essays anymore.”

Iwaizumi laughed, and Tobio was suddenly hyper-aware of every cell in his body. “Yeah, they were pretty bad, weren’t they?”

“Hey!” Tobio barked. 

Hitoka shot him a guilty look. “Sorry, Tobio, but they were.”

“Whatever,” Tobio grumbled. He gently nudged Hitoka so they switched spots, watching out of the corner of his eye as she handed Kei the carton full of onigiri. “Thank you,” he murmured, suddenly unable to look his upperclassman in the face. “You didn’t have to do all this.”

“No, I didn’t,” Iwaizumi said easily. “But I did it anyway, because I wanted to. You sounded pretty rough on the phone, Kageyama.”

Shame crawled up the back of Tobio’s throat. If he hadn’t been so pathetic, Iwaizumi would’ve stayed home, and spared himself both the expense and the time it took to come to the hospital. “Sorry.”

“I wanted to,” Iwaizumi said again. “Don’t be sorry. You didn’t force me to do anything. It’s okay to accept help once in a while.”

Privately, Tobio disagreed—in his experience, an offer of help almost always came with a high price tag attached—but it was rude to argue with somebody who’d just bought your dinner, so he kept his mouth shut. He couldn’t help but be aware, however, of the accumulating debt that he owed Iwaizumi. The incident in the alleyway; the tutoring sessions; the takeout. When Iwaizumi eventually cashed in that debt, it would probably leave Tobio cleaned out entirely. If Tobio were smart, he’d cut his association with the other man now, and save himself what he could. 

But Tobio had never been accused of being smart. 

Iwaizumi rocked on his heels. “I hope your friend recovers quickly, Kageyama.” He nodded once at Hitoka, and then turned to go. 

Tobio slanted a panicked glance at his friends. Kei looked as flatly neutral as always, but Hitoka was gesturing frantically after Iwaizumi with her chopsticks and Tadashi had set his jaw in that way that practically screamed  _ don’t you dare fuck this up. _

“Wait!” Tobio shouted, wincing when he realized how loud he’d been. “You can stay. If you want.” He offered the steaming carton of pork curry. “We—we could share. Um.”

Iwaizumi turned around. Over his shoulder, Kei mouthed,  _ great job, idiot _ . Tobio glared at him, then quickly forced his face into a strained smile when he saw Iwaizumi looking at him strangely. 

“Sure,” Iwaizumi said, after a pause. “As long as I’m not intruding.”

“You won’t be,” Tadashi assured him, leaning around Kei. “It’s a waiting game now. And you can help entertain Tobio. He’s hellish when he’s bored.”

“Hey!” Tobio said again, feeling betrayed. 

Iwaizumi laughed again, and Tobio forgot to be angry. “Okay.” He sat down next to Tobio, pulling out a pair of chopsticks for himself. “What’s your friend like, the one who got hurt?”

It turned out the only thing that could distract Tobio from worrying about Shouyou was talking about Shouyou. There was a lot to talk about: how annoying he was, the obnoxious bright-orange shade of his ridiculous fluffy hair, how he seemed to lack any concept of an “indoor voice”, the way he was always pushing everyone around him to be better. 

Iwaizumi was a good listener. It was normally Tobio doing the listening during their tutoring sessions, but he was comfortable enough with the role reversal that he hardly stopped for breath until the doors leading deeper into the hospital swung open, revealing a dazed Shouyou being gently herded along by a nurse. 

Tobio stopped mid-sentence, scrambling out of his seat. Even Kei stood up slightly faster than he usually did. Tobio and Hitoka braced Shouyou on either side while Tadashi accepted his discharge papers and the bill. 

“He’ll be okay,” the nurse said briskly. “But the painkillers are still in his system. He’ll need someone to watch over him tonight and make sure he drinks plenty of water.”

“I’ll do it,” Hitoka volunteered. “We’re roommates.” 

Tadashi took the nurse aside, asking about wound care and stitch removal. Tobio turned back to Iwaizumi, who’d followed the rest of them over, albeit at a slower pace. 

“Hi,” said Iwaizumi kindly, extending a hand. “You must be Hinata-kun. Kageyama’s told me a lot about you.”

Shouyou blinked up at him, swaying on his feet. “And you’re his tutor. His—his Iwaizumi-san. Tobio’s told me a lot about you too! He says you’re  _ really _ cool and  _ super _ smart and could also  _ bench press _ him and—”

“Okay, that’s enough!” Tobio yelped, placing a hand (much, much more gently than he normally would) over Shouyou’s big mouth. Iwaizumi blushed, lowering his hand, and Tobio’s eyes unwillingly followed the movement. He traced the line of Iwaizumi’s bicep, the flex of his forearm, the girth of his wrist, the—

Oh. 

Iwaizumi’s long sleeve had ridden up, exposing his soulmark. His  _ single _ soulmark. The dark circle glared up at him from Iwaizumi’s wrist, its filled-in status testament to the fact that Iwaizumi had already met—and kissed—his fated match, for it was the kiss that sealed the mark. Tobio knew, with instinct so deep it burned along his bones, that said fated match was Oikawa. His hand rose reflexively to trace the outlines of his own empty soulmarks, branded over his sternum. 

Polybonds were rare. Tobio had never met another person with a polybond, and maybe never would, outside his own soulmates. But all the research Tobio had been able to find on polybonds online agreed: the soulmarks were never apart. Just like soulmates were destined to be together, entwined heart and mind and soul, the marks were together, too. 

And Iwaizumi had one dark soulmark on his wrist.

It wasn’t like Tobio had been expecting anything. With his luck, he fully believed that he could die before he ever met his soulmates; or that if he did meet them, they might hate him on sight. But Iwaizumi had been so kind to him, and Tobio had begun to allow himself to hope, just a little bit. 

What a way to be reminded, Tobio thought bitterly, that disappointment was all that ever came of having  _ hope _ . 

“—io. Toooooobiiiiiiio.” 

Tobio blinked himself back into awareness, realizing that Shouyou was calling his name and probably had been for the last several seconds. “Hmp.”

“There you are,” Shouyou slurred. “We’re leaving.”

Sure enough, Hitoka was handing him his coat. Tobio took it automatically. Iwaizumi was picking up the empty takeout cartons, stuffing them back into the bag. “I’m sure you guys want to get home,” he said. “So I won’t bother you any longer. It was nice meeting everyone. Hinata-kun, I hope you recover soon.”

“Thanks!” Shouyou said brightly, and Tobio pasted on a smile when Iwaizumi turned to look at him. He was certain the expression was dreadful, but Iwaizumi either didn’t notice or didn’t care. 

“Look over that last question on the problem set again, Kageyama,” was all he said. “I think you can get it.” 

Then he was gone. 

“He was nice,” Hitoka said. 

“Yeah,” Tobio muttered. “He is.”

They got Shouyou into Hitoka’s car with no small amount of effort—Shouyou was twice as distractible as usual, and kept trying to squirm out of Kei’s grasp and chase after a stray cat loitering in the hospital’s parking lot—but eventually he was buckled in between Tobio and Tadashi in the back seat while Hitoka drove and Kei gave directions to his and Tadashi’s apartment. Tobio would be sleeping over at their place for the night, so Hitoka only had to make one stop before getting Shouyou home. 

Shouyou fell asleep quickly, head resting on Tobio’s shoulder. Tobio readjusted him so there wasn’t any pressure on the bandaged gash on his forehead. In the exhausted silence, Tobio rested his chin on one hand and stared blindly out the window. 

Soulmates weren’t everything, he reminded himself. His parents had been soulmates. And look where that relationship had gone: his mother had walked out when he was nine, and his father had turned to alcohol and worse in the aftermath. Hell, his aunt and uncle had been soulmates too. But they hadn’t improved each other, as soulmates should. Instead, they had been content to be apathetic and disdainful together, contemptuous of Tobio’s learning difficulties and his stilted mannerisms and even his polybond, which they viewed as an aberration. 

Tobio didn’t need his soulmates. He liked Iwaizumi—and Oikawa, too—but he didn’t need them either. 

So why did it feel like his heart was breaking?

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do not worry, the stray cat was not in fact a stray cat. His name is Meatball, and he belongs to a lovely couple who spoil him absolutely rotten. :)


	4. Four

Tooru was an obsessive person. He knew this about himself. It was the same story every time: something caught Tooru’s attention, something  _ stupid _ , something fleeting; but suddenly, it was all he could think about. 

At seven, it had been aliens. He’d spent hours on obscure corners of the internet or poring over library books with cracked spines, hungry for any scrap of information he could find. He’d built himself a spaceship out of cardboard and cried when it had fallen apart only days later. 

At twelve, it had been volleyball. He’d rewatched videos of his matches until his eyes ached and stung. He’d driven himself until his body had begun to betray him, and then he’d only driven himself further.

At eighteen, it had been Hajime. 

With one kiss, Hajime had become more than Tooru’s childhood best friend. He’d become his lover, his  _ soulmate _ ; the person Tooru could trust with everything. And Tooru had. He’d laid himself bare for Hajime, and cried tears of relief when Hajime had only pulled him closer instead of pushing him away.

Hajime was the only obsession Tooru had never rid himself of. He was twenty-two and aliens were an amusing interest, and volleyball was a diverting hobby, but Hajime—

Hajime was the beginning and the end of Tooru’s entire world, and Tooru wouldn’t have it any other way.

Which was why Kageyama Tobio frightened Tooru. 

The thing was, Tooru actually liked Kageyama. From the two interactions they’d shared, Tooru could tell the underclassman was painfully earnest, adorably awkward, and also harboring the world’s biggest puppy crush on Hajime. Which was only an indicator of good taste, in Tooru’s opinion.

It didn’t hurt that Kageyama was cute, what with those wide blue eyes and sharply defined jawline; the long-fingered hands and the way he blushed so easily. 

Moreover, Tooru could tell that Hajime liked the kid as well—he came home from those tutoring sessions in a good mood, smiling slightly and full of stories about whatever stupid thing Kageyama had said that day. 

Yes, Iwaizumi Hajime was the obsession Tooru could not—would not—surrender, but he could feel another one creeping up on him, soft as summer rain, and its name was Kageyama Tobio.

Of course, there existed an entirely reasonable possible explanation for Tooru’s infatuation, for Hajime’s soft spot, for Kageyama’s puppy crush. It sat high on Tooru’s left shoulderblade, one dark circle and one empty. It was potentially a soulbond that could be drawing them to each other, weaving them inexorably together with deft and hidden hands. 

And that was the crux of the matter, the root of Tooru’s fear. If Kageyama was indeed the third part of Tooru and Hajime’s polybond, what then?

What if Kageyama rejected them? What if he only rejected  _ one _ of them? What if he liked Hajime better?

(Of course he would like Hajime better. Hajime was strong and stable and brilliant. He wasn’t like Tooru, who was petty and childish and fell apart at the slightest of provocations.)

Or—what if Hajime decided he liked  _ Kageyama _ better? He’d never say so to Tooru, too cautious of Tooru’s feelings, but Tooru would be able to tell anyways. He’d always been good at reading people. The light in Hajime’s eyes whenever he looked at Tooru would start to fade. Hajime would start to touch Tooru less, and then Tooru would lose him entirely. 

Tooru could not endure that. 

So, yes. He liked Kageyama. He just didn’t want to find out if Kageyama was his soulmate, lest it ruin everything. He was adamant—now that he knew Kageyama was not avoiding them—that he was going to avoid Kageyama. Tooru knew it was sort of petty to engage in the exact behavior that he’d spent a week whining to Hajime about, but, well. This was  _ different _ . 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tooru was even certain he would have gotten away with the whole avoidance thing, too, if Kageyama hadn’t been such an adorably clueless idiot. 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tooru had a routine. 

He went to his Tuesday classes, he had lunch with Matsukawa, he sat in the library and worked on his thesis, he picked up a salted caramel mocha from the university’s coffee shop, and then he went home to Hajime. 

The route he took home led him past a small corner shop, shelves lined with instant noodles and self-care necessities. Passing the door, Tooru was busy making sure the coffee shop had gotten his drink order right, and therefore it was absolutely one hundred percent  _ not his fault _ when somebody else crashed into him. 

“Hey!” Tooru yelped. He windmilled backwards and landed on his ass, but managed to preserve the drink by clutching it to his chest. 

His partner in the crash was not so lucky: bags of groceries spilled across the concrete, one of them emitting a worrying  _ crack  _ when it hit the pavement. Grumbling under his breath, Tooru reached for it—and looked up into wide blue eyes. 

It was Kageyama on his knees across from Tooru, one hand outstretched for the fallen bags. “Oh,” he breathed. “Oikawa-san.”

Tooru blinked, frowning. The first emotion that washed over him was frustration: this was the exact scenario he  _ hadn’t _ wanted to end up in. 

(Infuriatingly enough, the second emotion to sweep through him was fondness.) 

“Tobio-chan,” Tooru said in a sickly sweet tone. “Don’t you know you’re supposed to use those big blue eyes of yours for looking where you’re going?”

Kageyama flushed, red crawling from the tips of his ears down to his cheekbones. Tooru bit back a grin. He was just so easy to fluster. 

“You’re the one who ran into me,” Kageyama snapped, “so I think you should be the one using your—” He cut off abruptly, going impossibly redder.

Tooru looked down. His hand had brushed Kageyama’s, the slightest graze of fingertips over fingertips. 

“S—sorry,” Kageyama choked out. “I’ll just—”

He fumbled for his fallen bags, freezing when he opened one of them to reveal a busted milk carton and a crushed container of eggs.

“Fuck,” Kageyama spat, shoulders slumping. “ _ Fuck _ .” Tooru wasn’t certain, because Kageyama had turned his face away, but he sounded—he sounded near tears.

Tooru opened his mouth. The words  _ it’s not that big of a deal _ were on the tip of his tongue, but he swallowed them down. It wouldn’t be a big deal to Tooru, if he dropped his groceries and had to buy extra. But to Kageyama, who was strapped for cash—the episode at the diner had made that obvious—and whose friend had just gone to the hospital after being assaulted, this was likely the last thing he needed. 

Tooru did not want to spend any more time with Kageyama. He wanted to  _ avoid _ Kageyama. But he couldn’t just leave the other boy sitting there with his ruined groceries, especially when the collision might’ve been just the tiniest bit his fault. Hajime would yell at him for that. 

Tooru did some rapid mental calculations, and came to a decision. 

“Get up, Tobio-chan,” Tooru said cheerily. “You’ve just reminded me I’ve got some shopping to do as well! And you can help me, since you so rudely ran me over.”

“I did  _ not _ —”

“Here, hold this.” Tooru thrust his salted caramel mocha in Kageyama’s face, smiling when the other boy visibly balked, but took the drink anyway. He scooped up Kageyama’s ruined groceries, sneaking a quick peek inside the bag before he tossed it in a nearby trash can. Eggs, milk (so much milk), and a couple cans of beans. That wouldn’t be too difficult. 

Kageyama retrieved the rest of his bags, looking two seconds away from bolting. Tooru planted a firm hand in between his shoulder blades and gave a soft push. “Inside, Tobio-chan. Let’s go, hup hup!”

Inside the store, Tooru kept up a constant stream of inane chatter. He talked about his classes, the unsatisfactory water pressure in his apartment, the raccoon he’d chased away from the trash bins the other night. He even managed to gently bully Kageyama into taking a sip of his mocha, though he had to clear his throat and look away when the other boy’s pink lips wrapped hesitantly around the straw. 

And while Tooru kept Kageyama distracted with inconsequential information, he stealthily slipped eggs, milk, and beans into his cart alongside the milkbread and vegetables he was buying for himself. The checkout was especially tricky: he had to send Kageyama to the other side of the store for paper towels, claiming he “forgot” them, but his ruse was undiscovered by the time they left the corner store together. 

“Where’s your apartment, Tobio-chan?” Tooru asked. 

Kageyama gave him a bewildered look, brow wrinkling. 

“I have some of your bags,” Tooru pointed out. And it was true. Mostly. He’d taken one when he’d handed Kageyama the mocha. 

“Um, you don’t have to—”

Tooru pouted. “Do you not want me to come over?”

“No!” Kageyama’s eyes widened. “You can come over. And I’ll cook dinner for both of us.”

Tooru paused. That, he hadn’t been expecting. He’d simply been planning on dropping Kageyama’s bag (with the replacement groceries he’d just bought sneakily tucked inside) off at Kageyama’s place, but if Kageyama was offering . . . 

He was supposed to be avoiding Kageyama. But—Kageyama was just so  _ cute _ . He was a decent conversationalist, too, when he wasn’t glaring as if the entire world had just offended him on a molecular level. And, it wasn’t like Tooru was going to lose his mind and kiss him, so the soulmate issue wasn’t even going to come up. 

“Okay,” said Tooru.

Kageyama lived in a rundown block of apartments not far from campus, on the very top floor. His place was—well, it was kind of small and shitty by Tooru’s standards, but it was clean. The appliances were worn, but obviously well cared-for. 

Kageyama ducked into the pantry to put away the majority of his groceries, and Tooru quickly shoved the milk, eggs, and beans into the small fridge while his back was turned. He tried to offer his help with the cooking, but Kageyama gruffly turned him down, insisting that Tooru sit down at the tiny kitchen table and rest. 

Tooru gave in without much of a fight, looking around curiously. For all that Kageyama’s apartment was clean, it was also very . . . sparse. It didn’t look lived-in. The detritus that Tooru expected—discarded clothing, personal knick knacks, perhaps a favorite blanket—was entirely absent. The only touch of personality was a row of pictures pinned carefully to the fridge. Several of them were of the same five people: a tall blonde who managed to look apathetic in every single shot, a redhead who was a mere blur in at least half the photos, a grinning blonde girl, a freckled boy with broad shoulders, and Kageyama. There was also a single picture of a young woman with Kageyama’s eyes, staring directly at the camera with something haunted in the line of her unsmiling mouth. Tooru shivered, and looked away. 

“So, Tobio-chan, you live alone?”

Kageyama adjusted the heat under a simmering pot. “Yes.”

Tooru ignored the way that confession satisfied him. So what if Kageyama lived alone? Kageyama’s dating life—or lack thereof, as Tooru suspected—was not his business. 

“How’s your friend? The one that went to the hospital? Hajime told me what happened.”

The knife Kageyama was using to chop chicken for the soup stilled, his fingers flexing around the hilt. A muscle jumped in his jaw. 

Ah. So Kageyama was still torn up about it, then. Hajime had been right to go to him at the hospital. He’d gotten the call while they were both still at home, and while Tooru couldn’t hear Kageyama’s side of the conversation, Hajime’s face alone had told him that something was wrong. 

“He’s alright,” Kageyama said eventually. “Healing. Still has a concussion. But he’s Shouyou. Nothing can keep him down for long.” He spun away from the stove, offering Tooru a steaming bowl of soup and setting one down for himself on the opposite side of the table.

“Thank you,” Tooru said quietly. He took a bite and his eyes widened in surprise. “Hey, this is actually really good.”

Kageyama honest-to-gods pouted at him, plush lower lip protruding. “You didn’t think I could cook, did you.”

“I—” Tooru spluttered. “Hang on, no—”

The barest hint of a smile touched Kageyama’s mouth, his eyes lighting up with amusement. It made him look younger, more open. It was also one of the most beautiful things Tooru had ever seen. 

Tooru turned his head to the side and grasped at his composure. “Don’t sass me.”

Kageyama looked up at him through his eyelashes. It was the same expression he’d pulled that night in the alley, and gods, it should’ve been  _ illegal _ . “Wouldn't dream of it, Oikawa-san.”

“Shut up,” Tooru grumbled, and took another bite of his soup. 

They passed the meal in easy silence, and Tooru found himself disappointed when he placed his clean bowl in the sink. He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to see Kageyama again, promises to avoid him be damned. 

“Look,” Tooru said when he was at the door, retrieving his own bags of groceries to take home. “The next time you have a tutoring session with Hajime, just come over to our place instead of going to the library. I’ve been to yours, so it’s only fair.”

“Okay,” Kageyama said, and gave another one of those small smiles. “Thanks, Oikawa-san.”

“No problem,” Tooru said cheerfully. He took a step out the door and then turned back, halfway in and halfway out of Kageyama’s apartment. There was a question that had been eating at him ever since Hajime had told him what had happened to Kageyama’s friend, keeping him up into the small hours of the night. “Kageyama . . . about your job.”

Kageyama’s fingers tightened on the doorframe. “Yes?”

“Why do you do it? It seems . . . dangerous.”

“It can be,” Kageyama said, tilting his head to the side. “But it’s just a job. The hours are flexible, and the pay is enough. It keeps the lights on, and I can be a student at the same time.”

Just a job. 

_ Just _ a job. 

Tooru nodded, shoving down the irrational feelings of disquiet that were stirring in his gut. He didn’t have anything against sex work, and he wasn’t Kageyama’s mother. It was ridiculous for him to be so uncomfortable with the idea of Kageyama selling his body for money. Ridiculous for him to be—ever so slightly—jealous. Kageyama wasn’t proven to be his and Hajime’s soulmate (yet), and they weren’t dating him.

“Okay,” Tooru said. “Be safe, Tobio-chan.”

He flashed a peace sign at Kageyama and then left, taking the long way back to the apartment. But no matter the briskness of the air or the beauty of the scenery, he couldn’t shake the feeling of uneasiness that had begun to unfurl underneath his skin. 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Your wallet, please.”

Tobio handed the article over silently, waiting for the security guard to wave him through the metal detectors that guarded the interior entrance to the Women’s Prison. She flipped through it with a glance, and then jerked her head. Tobio stepped through the metal detectors, holding his breath—he had an irrational fear that one day he would put a knife or something in his jacket pocket and forget about it—only releasing it when he reached the other side safely and his wallet was once more in his possession. 

The guard didn’t bother telling Tobio where to go. He knew where to go, and she knew that he knew. He had been a twice-weekly visitor here for four and a half years. 

Tobio walked down a long hallway that terminated in a set of double doors. He pushed them open and emerged into a room lined with windows. The windows were separated by dividers that enforced some measure of privacy, and each small “cubicle” was equipped with an ancient-looking telephone.

Tobio took a seat at one of the cubicles, picked up the phone, and waited. 

He didn’t have to wait long. Another guard opened the door to the windowed room, but on the other side of the glass. A woman shuffled through after her, free of cuffs but wearing the same shapeless baby blue attire she’d worn every other time Tobio had come to see her. 

Kageyama Miwa sat down in the chair opposite Tobio’s and picked up the phone. 

“Miwa,” Tobio said softly. His sister looked . . . well, she never looked good, exactly. There were always the dark circles underneath her eyes; the dull sheen to the hair she worked so hard to maintain. But she was alive, and she was there, and that was more than enough for Tobio. 

“Tobio,” Miwa returned, and then squinted at him. She edged forward in her chair until her nose was nearly touching the glass between them. “Okay, you look different.”

Tobio glanced down at himself reflexively. “No, I don’t.” He looked the same as he always did, dressed in a loose pair of jeans and an overlarge sweatshirt. 

“Yes, you do,” Miwa insisted. “Something happened. Something . . . well, you’re not sure how to feel about it yet, are you?”

Tobio pressed his lips together, half amused and half annoyed. Miwa had always been able to read him, ever since they were children. Miwa claimed it was a superpower of big sisters everywhere. Tobio privately thought it was a superpower all her own, forged out of her desperate desire to protect him when he was younger and even less likely to use his words to express his needs. 

“I made two new friends,” Tobio admitted softly, clutching the telephone. 

She beamed at him. “Tobio, that’s great! Did you meet them in class, or at the restaurant?”

Tobio faltered. That particular lie continued to haunt him. Upon his acceptance into university, Miwa had of course asked him how he planned to pay for it, knowing their aunt and uncle would not bother to help him finance his education. Tobio, who’d already started working as a hooker, had panicked and told her that he’d picked up a part time job as a server at a restaurant instead. Despite everything she’d done for him, some small part of him was afraid that she’d hate him if she knew the truth—that she’d look down on him. 

Tobio wasn’t sure if he could survive that. So he lied, even if it made him feel terrible every time she brought it up. 

“At the restaurant,” he said, trying to infuse as much truth into the fiction as possible. “They helped me chase away an aggressive customer. And now one of them is tutoring me in my Social Statistics class, and I made dinner for the other three nights ago. He said my cooking was good.”

She smiled at him, and Tobio’s shoulders eased. She always had that effect on him, even through an inch of bulletproof glass. “So what’s the uncertainty for, then? They sound like great people.”

“I—” Tobio swallowed past the lump in his throat. “I really like them, Miwa. But they’re already soulbonded. To each other. And Iwaizumi-san—he’s the one who’s tutoring me—only has one soulmark. I saw it.”

“Oh, Tobio.” Miwa’s tone was gentle, but her eyes were sharp. “I’m sorry. That couldn’t have been easy. But you haven’t told them you’re polybonded, have you?”

She was always looking out for him, even now. Tobio shook his head. Rare as they were, polybonds were regarded as a freak of nature by most, and a downright abomination by others. Polybonded people were stereotyped as being greedy, disloyal, and attention-seeking. Tobio had seen news reports about polybonded people getting rejected from jobs, or even jumped in the streets if their multiple marks were visible. Miwa’d practically had a heart attack when Tobio admitted he’d told his friends at the “restaurant,” only calming down when she learned that Kei and Tadashi were Unmarked, and Hitoka and Shouyou could honestly give less of a fuck. Tobio also wasn’t worried about his clients seeing his soulmarks—anybody who illegally used a stranger for sex had just as much to hide as he did. 

“You can still be friends with them,” Miwa said softly. “People can love you in more ways than one.”

“I know,” Tobio got out. “That’s what I was planning on. Being friends.” He tried to smile, but knew by the look in her eyes that he wasn’t very successful. “Anyways. Um. How are you?”

It was an obvious deflection, and they both knew it, but Miwa indulged him as she always had. “Can’t complain,” she drawled. “You know how it is. Five-star accommodations up in here.”

Her eyes glittered with good humor, and Tobio missed her so much he couldn’t breathe. “Six months,” he said abruptly. “Six months until—”

“I know,” she said, and pressed one hand against the glass. Tobio mirrored her until they were palm-to-palm. “I know, and I’m counting down the days.”

Tobio met her eyes, as blue and fathomless as his own. The world was against him, Tobio knew that. His mother was gone and his father was dead; his aunt and uncle wanted nothing to do with him now that they’d washed their hands of him for good; and Tobio was polybonded in a society that viewed the connection between two people to be the most sacred commandment there was. 

And yet—and yet, Tobio knew he could never truly be lost. He had his friends, and he had Miwa. As long as Miwa loved him, there was some worth in him after all.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just love Miwa, okay. That scene (spoilers) in the manga where she's like "my Tobio has been amazing ever since he was born" MA'AM your hand in marriage PLEASE


	5. Five

“Tooooobiiiiiio! Your boyfriends are here!” 

The door slammed open and Tobio’s hand jerked, smearing the eyeliner he was trying to re-apply. “Dumbass,” he barked, trying to cover the crack in his voice. “Iwaizumi-san and Oikawa-san are  _ not _ my boyfriends.”

Shouyou, hanging onto the doorframe of the hotel’s prep room, grinned. The gash on his forehead was mostly healed, giving him somewhat of a rakish look that Shouyou claimed made him more attractive and Kei claimed made him more insufferable. He wasn’t yet back to actually working, but he insisted on visiting the hotel periodically to check in.

And by ‘check in’ he apparently meant ‘irritate everyone on the premises.’

“That’s not what I heard,” Shouyou said in a sing-song voice. “Hitoka-chan said that Kei said that Tadashi said you told him you like them!”

Tobio paused, trying to think his way through that chain of association. The implication registered and he spluttered. “I said no such thing.” What he had actually said was that he liked spending time around Iwaizumi and Oikawa, which was very different from saying he  _ liked _ them. He did—of course—like them, but he wasn’t quite ready to admit it to anyone who wasn’t Miwa, especially not after seeing Iwaizumi’s soulmark. “And Tadashi was supposed to keep that to himself.”

Shouyou gave him an entirely unsympathetic look. “There are no secrets here, Tobio.”

“I’m beginning to realize that,” Tobio muttered. He thumbed away the ruined eyeliner and fixed it with a quick swipe of his wrist. Standing to leave, he hesitated, looking at himself in the mirror. An entirely average young man looked back at him, his only distinguishing feature being the piercing blue eyes that glittered out from underneath a fringe of dark hair. 

Tobio sat back down in front of the mirror, fingering a tube of concealer. As Shouyou had said, Oikawa and Iwaizumi were waiting for him outside. It had become a routine of theirs: every Friday night for the past three weeks, the duo would pick him up from his job and they would go out and dance. Beginning as a one-time celebration of a high grade on his Social Statistics exam, it had escalated into being a weekly occurrence. Sometimes Tadashi and Kei would come along as well. Shouyou—who complained that the flashing lights and pounding music of the club hurt his head—and Hitoka—who didn’t like crowds—often opted to go to an arcade together instead. 

Tobio opened the concealer, applying it in careful, even strokes. Oikawa and Iwaizumi were outside waiting for him, and it wasn’t a crime to want to look good for them, right? 

“Tobio,” Shouyou groaned. “Hurry up. You’re taking forever. I want to go to the arcade.”

“You’re so impatient,” Tobio snapped. “Go on, then.”

Shouyou rolled his eyes. “Not without you, dumbass.” He crowded close to Tobio, hooking his chin over Tobio’s shoulder until Tobio growled and shoved him off. 

“Meanieyama,” Shouyou pouted. Tobio stuck his tongue out at him in the mirror’s reflection. Shouyou’s expression abruptly shifted, adopting that unblinking stare that raised the hair along the back of Tobio’s neck. 

“Tobio,” Shouyou said. “If you don’t hurry up and go, I’m gonna tell Oikawa and Iwaizumi that you  _ like  _ them.”

Tobio froze. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Oh, I would dare. I would dare! In fact, I would dare  _ so hard _ that I’m gonna go tell them right now, and I’m gonna be super loud about it so everyone in this whole city knows about your big, dumb crush on—”

Pure murder in his heart, Tobio stood up and lunged at his friend.

Shouyou yipped, fleeing out the prep room door with Tobio hot on his heels. Shouyou was fast, damnably so, and despite Tobio’s longer legs they were neck and neck by the time they burst out of the hotel’s back entrance. Tobio only caught him because Shouyou tripped over a loose stone and almost went sprawling. 

“Idiot!” Tobio shouted, seizing Shouyou by the waist and hefting him over his shoulder like a particularly squirmy sack of potatoes. “Moron!  _ Fucking _ moron.”

Upside down and with Tobio’s shoulder digging into his stomach, Shouyou gave as good as he got, reaching up to grab a handful of Tobio’s hair. He yanked hard, forcing Tobio’s head back. “You’re the dumbass here, Dumbassyama. You think your apartment’s haunted!”

“I didn’t buy those eggs,” Tobio hollered, wrenching his head out of Shouyou’s grip. It was an argument they’d had many times over the past few weeks, after milk, said eggs, and a few cans of beans had mysteriously appeared in Tobio’s fridge. “If I didn’t buy them, who did? It had to have been a ghost!” 

Shouyou somehow managed to flip himself around on Tobio’s shoulders until he was laying across them lengthwise. Tobio reared his head back, avoiding a knee to the nose. “A ghost who buys groceries?”

“It could happen!”

“You’re so  _ stupid _ !”

“Dipshit!”

“Twit!”

“Dunce!”

A poorly-disguised laugh interrupted the argument and Tobio froze, turning around slowly. Shouyou took the opportunity to haul himself up into a sitting position on Tobio’s shoulders, hands buried in Tobio’s hair for purchase. Tobio gripped him absentmindedly by the shins so he didn’t fall backwards. 

Oikawa and Iwaizumi were leaning up against the alley wall. Iwaizumi had turned his face away, but Tobio could see his shoulders shaking. Oikawa, on the other hand, wasn’t even trying to hide his amusement, mouth turned up into a wide grin.

“Look,” Tobio said, feeling heat rise to his face. “We were just, ah—” He stopped, caught. He couldn’t admit that he and Shouyou had been fighting over  _ them _ .

“There’s really no need to argue over who’s stupider,” said Kei as he pushed the door to the hotel open, Tadashi and Hitoka half a step behind him. “As we’ve already established, you both only have one brain cell, so you’re each as moronic as the other.”

Tobio had never been so glad to be insulted in his life, and judging by the sardonic light in Kei’s eyes, he knew that. Tobio groaned inwardly. He owed Kei a favor now, which Kei would certainly make sure he repaid ten times over. 

He nudged Shouyou’s knee. “Get off.”

“Bend down then.”

Tobio did and Shouyou hopped forwards over his shoulders. There was a moment where they were very close, and Shouyou grabbed him by the ear—hard—and whispered, “You look fine.”

Tobio straightened, feeling better despite himself. They shared a nod and then Shouyou whipped around, seizing Hitoka by the hand. 

“Ready?” 

He didn’t wait for an answer before he was tugging her down the sidewalk, already yammering on about some new game at the arcade he’d found, and wasn’t it so cool? The man who worked the front desk was really nice and really tall but he had the worst hair, like a rooster’s, and sometimes his quiet friend visited, and Shouyou liked him a lot, and—

“He’s in an awful hurry,” Oikawa remarked, staring after Shouyou with something odd in his eyes. “Sure you don’t want to go with him tonight, Tobio-chan?”

Tobio frowned. “Uh, I’m sure.” Did Oikawa and Iwaizumi not want to spend the night with him after all? Was he intruding?

Iwaizumi elbowed Oikawa in the side, muttering something that sounded a lot like “being a possessive piece of shit.”

Tadashi coughed, drawing Tobio’s attention. “We’ll be heading home,” he said. “Not really feeling like going out. The new episode of Kei’s favorite K-drama is on tonight, and I had a bit of a rough night.”

Tobio nodded his acceptance. Tadashi  _ had _ taken on more clients than he usually did. Kei held out his hand and Tadashi took it without even having to look, fingers lacing together with the ease of long practice. 

When Tobio turned toward Oikawa, he found him watching them leave, eyes fastened to the joining of their hands. 

“They’re good for each other,” he said. “Soulmates?”

“They’re together,” Tobio said evasively, trying to get his hair to lay flat again. Shouyou’s gremlin fingers had really done a number on it.

“Hm.” Oikawa’s eyes met his, razor-sharp and searching. “One of them’s Unmarked, isn’t he? No . . . that’s not quite it.  _ Both _ of them are.”

Tobio froze. He’d known Oikawa was perceptive, but not that Oikawa could read something like that right off his face. Kei was going to kill him. “They love each other,” he said defensively. “And they’ve been together for four years now and neither of them has ever even  _ once _ looked at someone else they way they look at each other—”

“Whoa, whoa,” Iwaizumi said, holding his hands up in a gesture of peace. “Kageyama, relax. Neither of us have a problem with it.”

“—and people might say that the Unmarked are incapable of love but that’s just not true, anyone with eyes could look at them and tell—” Tobio stopped. “Oh. You don’t?”

“It’s love, isn’t it?” Oikawa said with a shrug. “The Unmarked, the polybonded, those who choose someone other than their soulmates. If it’s love, it doesn’t matter.”

“Right,” Tobio said faintly. The words pushed against his lips:  _ I’m polybonded _ . He shook the impulse away, shuffling his feet a little. “Should we go now?”

“Sure.” Iwaizumi jerked his head and Tobio fell into step between him and Oikawa, hands shoved into his pockets. It was getting colder, and Tobio had taken to wearing Iwaizumi’s scarf when he went out. He didn’t miss the way Iwaizumi’s eyes dipped over the fabric, and the look made him feel at once delighted and ashamed. 

_ Friends _ , Tobio reminded himself. That was what he’d told himself he could be with Oikawa and Iwaizumi. Just friends. 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The eyeliner was killing him. 

Hajime had noticed it immediately, as soon as Kageyama had come tumbling out of the hotel doors with Hinata. It made Kageyama’s eyes even bigger and bluer than they already were, drawing attention to the delicate sweep of his lashes over his cheekbones. Under the colorful strobing lights of the club, it made him look ethereal and more than a little unreal, a spirit that had come down to earth for one night of heat and debauchery. 

Hajime couldn’t stop thinking about what it might feel like to run a thumb over those cut-glass cheekbones, to watch the eyeliner smear under his fingertip. 

Good, he decided. It would feel good. 

Hajime knocked back his whiskey in one clean swallow. Tooru had already had two of those fancy cocktails he was such a fan of, and Hajime had to catch up. The first night they’d all gone out together—three Fridays ago, after Kageyama had earned an 84 on his Social Stats exam—he’d offered to buy Kageyama something too. Kageyama had turned him down, murmuring that he wasn’t yet of the legal drinking age. The comment had sent Tooru into paroxysms of laughter, prompting him to call Kageyama a “goody two-shoes.”

The full-faced blush that had then stolen over Kageyama’s face still featured in Hajime’s dreams.

In fact, much of Kageyama was featuring in Hajime’s dreams, recently. If Hajime had thought his slight infatuation with the younger boy was bad before, it had only worsened after Tooru had invited him over to their apartment for their tutoring sessions. Something about seeing Kageyama sitting at their kitchen table, face wrinkled into a scowl of concentration—it had felt right. It had felt like he belonged there. 

Hajime had honestly been shocked by Tooru’s sudden decision to invite Kageyama over. Tooru liked to think he was an expert at reading people—and he was—but he often forgot that Hajime could read him just as easily. Tooru’s insecurity and jealousy regarding Kageyama had been glaringly apparent to Hajime: he was afraid of his own feelings for Kageyama. Afraid of what they might mean. 

He was afraid of being replaced.

Something had changed during that disaster of a shopping trip and the subsequent meal. Tooru had swung from grudgingly liking the boy but actively avoiding him to the beginnings of an obsession with him. (Not that Hajime could blame him. He felt much the same.)

They’d had a serious conversation after Kageyama had left that first tutoring session, talking about boundaries and the placement thereof. Hajime and Tooru had agreed: they were both attracted to Kageyama. They both thought he could be their third soulmate. They both wanted to get to know him better. They both agreed to take it slow.

They were not, despite Hajime and Tooru’s best efforts, actually taking it slow.

The first time they’d brought Kageyama out to the club, it had been meant to test the waters. A chance to see if they all got along well together outside of dramatic encounters in alleyways and library basements. 

And they had indeed gotten along well. A little too well, because it turned out that Kageyama could  _ dance _ . It was what brought them back to the club again and again, the desire to see Kageyama lose himself on the dance floor, an expression of near-rapture on his face. 

It was what held Hajime’s attention now, standing at the bar with his empty glass in his hand. He wasn’t sure if he believed in gods, but if he did, they were on the floor tonight.

Kageyama’s slim hips moved in perfect accord with the beat. His eyes were closed, his head swinging in and out of rays of colored lights. He danced like he had nothing left to lose—like he had never known hunger or cold or the touch of an ungentle hand. A slight space had formed around him, and Hajime knew the other patrons of the club were watching him. 

Only watching, though, because Kageyama was very obviously accompanied. Tooru had pressed himself against Kageyama’s back, matching his easy rhythm with liquid grace. Sweat dampened the nape of Tooru’s neck, limning the bridge of his nose. Their effortless harmony was one of the most beautiful things Hajime had ever seen. 

As if sensing Hajime’s gaze, Tooru’s head turned, his eyes seeking Hajime’s at the bar.  _ Come here _ , he mouthed. 

Hajime had never been able to deny Tooru anything he really, truly wanted. He set down his glass and went. 

On the floor, it was like everything else ceased to exist. There was only Hajime and Tooru, and Kageyama between them. Hajime slung his arms around Tooru’s neck, bringing himself in close to Kageyama. He could smell the other man’s pine cologne, count each individual eyelash. Tooru grinned at him over Kageyama’s shoulder, and Hajime matched him with a flash of teeth, kicking their joined rhythm up a notch. 

Kageyama opened his eyes, one eyebrow quirking up in challenge. 

Hajime gazed back at him steadily, trying to convince himself that the increase in his heartbeat was only due to the physical exertion. 

Then Kageyama shifted—or perhaps Tooru did, or maybe Hajime himself—and it was like coming home. The three of them melted together in seamless unity: a chord that had no beginning or ending, a note struck so pure and true that Hajime’s ears rang with the force of it.

How long they danced, Hajime had no idea. They only stopped because Kageyama began to visibly tire, his head drooping forward to rest on Hajime’s collarbone. Tooru peeled himself away from Kageyama, returning with a glass of water that Kageyama downed gratefully. Hajime fought not to trace the path of an errant droplet that made its way down Kageyama’s neck. 

When they stumbled their way out of the club together, it was Kageyama who appeared drunk despite being the only one entirely sober. He was red-cheeked and blissed-out, leaning most of his weight on Hajime’s shoulder. 

“Let’s get him home,” Hajime murmured to Tooru, who nodded his acquiescence and slipped one hand into Hajime’s back pocket. 

The closer they got to his apartment complex, the more Kageyama seemed to come back to himself, until he stopped them outside his door with a tug on both their sleeves. “Hey,” he said, avoiding their eyes. “I had a really nice time again.”

“So did I,” Tooru purred, swaying forward. Hajime yanked him back by his collar and shot him a stern glare.  _ Slowly. _

“And I just wanted to say, um. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome?” Hajime asked, searching his mind for anything he’d done for Kageyama recently. 

“No, like. Thank you.” There was an odd intensity to Kageyama’s words, underscored by the burn of his sea-storm eyes. He pressed his lips together. “I don’t—most people aren’t—”

He made a frustrated gesture with his hands, eyebrows drawing a deep groove in his forehead. “Most people aren’t—kind. But you were. You chose me, in that alleyway. And you—you’ve kept on choosing me. I don’t understand why. But I. I appreciate it. And I like you both a lot. As friends. You’re my friends.”

The last sentence came out rushed, and Hajime even thought he caught the shine of unshed tears in Kageyama’s eyes before he ducked his head. 

Hajime’s first, instinctive reaction was disappointment.  _ I like you both a lot. As friends _ . 

They weren’t trying to be Kageyama’s  _ friends _ . 

And then Hajime hated himself for his disappointment, because Kageyama clearly held that friendship in very high regard. He wouldn’t even look at them, overcome by emotion. Hajime reached out a hand, clumsily patting Kageyama on the shoulder. 

“We like you too,” Tooru said after an awkward pause. Kageyama nodded once and shut the door to his apartment behind him. 

In the hallway, Tooru stared at Hajime with frustration in his eyes. “Friends? I was practically  _ throwing myself  _ at him on the dance floor tonight.”

Hajime exhaled, tugging Tooru closer to him with an arm around his shoulder. He let Tooru bury his face in his neck and huff out an irritated breath. 

“Slow,” he reminded his soulmate, tipping his head back to stare aimlessly upwards. “We agreed to take this slow.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tobio closed his front door behind himself and fought not to scream. His eyes stung with the pressure of unshed tears, throat burning with the effort of swallowing down a sob. It had taken every ounce of his self-control not to lose it right there in the hallway, and he’d even had to duck his head so Oikawa and Iwaizumi wouldn’t see the way his eyes were already beginning to well up. 

Being just friends with somebody was a lot easier when Tobio hadn’t felt them pressed up against him in the heat and closeness of the club, swaying together to a beat only the three of them could hear. Being just friends with somebody was a lot easier when they hadn’t invited Tobio over to their place twice a week; when they hadn’t walked him back to his apartment every time they went out just to make sure he got home safe; when his phone wasn’t constantly lighting up with notifications from them, the latest text in a string of comfortable chatter. 

His speech in the hallway had been more for his own benefit than theirs. A self-directed reminder. He could tell that it had surprised them—even Oikawa, who was never anything less than suave and sleekly composed, had been thrown off-kilter—but it had needed to be said. 

He’d let himself forget, in the club. He’d indulged himself in a fantasy where Oikawa and Iwaizumi could mean something to him beyond the kind upperclassmen who’d taken him under their wing. Then he’d gone further than that, and indulged himself in a fantasy where he could mean something to  _ them _ beyond the beleaguered hooker they’d plucked out of an alleyway one night.

But that’s all it could ever be—a fantasy. It was apparent even to Tobio, who Tadashi had once accused of having the observational skills of a rock, that Oikawa and Iwaizumi were deeply and irrevocably in love. Their soulbond aside, Tobio was not going to stand in the way of that. Real love was rare. It was precious. It required safekeeping.

But gods, how Tobio  _ wanted _ . He wanted Iwaizumi’s arms thrown over his shoulders, teeth gleaming under strobe lights. He wanted Oikawa’s pleasantly surprised face when Tobio made him a good meal. He wanted Iwaizumi’s gentle help with his problem sets. He wanted Oikawa’s  _ we like you too.  _

Tobio shoved himself away from the door, stripping off his jacket and shoes. He felt dirty with more than sweat and makeup. Dumping the rest of his clothing on his bed, Tobio stepped into his tiny bathroom and turned the shower as cold as it would go. 

The freezing spray calmed him slightly, bringing Tobio back to himself. The two blank soulmarks on his chest stared up at him, empty and pitiless. 

It was better this way, Tobio reminded himself. Better just to be friends, no matter how much he might wish it otherwise. A soulmate could love you, yes. But—

— _ cold nights and rough hands and piles of empty bottles strewn over the house; the back corner of his closet and bruises that took weeks to fade _ —

—a soulmate could destroy you, too. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tadashi is literally the /biggest/ Iwaoikage shipper. He has an entire page on his Notes app dedicated to the speech he's planning on giving when they finally get together.


	6. Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note, this chapter contains the use of a drugged drink. I have marked off that section with * at both ends if you don't want to read it.

The shrill, persistent ringing of Tobio’s phone woke him from a dead slumber at an hour of the morning far too early for any self-respecting university student on a Saturday. He considered, for a half a second, slapping the ringer into submission and then going back to sleep—but it was Shouyou’s ringtone, some peppy Western song Tobio had chosen for him because its annoyingness suited Shouyou perfectly. 

Tobio groaned and rolled over, swiping his phone off the nightstand and pressing it to his ear. “Hel—”

“—YOU WILL NOT  _ BELIEVE _ WHAT HAPPENED LAST NIGHT I WENT AND IT WAS LIKE GWAHHHHH AND BAM AND THEN I FOUND HIM AND I ASKED AND HE SAID YES AND THEN IT WAS EVEN MORE LIKE FWOOOOOOSH—”

Tobio yanked the phone away from his ear, wincing. “Dumbass! You’re being too loud!”

There was a pause on the other end of the line as Shouyou obviously struggled to compose himself, and then he blurted, “ _ Grapefruit _ .”

Tobio froze. That was a Code Word, part of a system he, Shouyou, Tadashi, Kei, and Hitoka had put together when they were just baby hookers trying to get their feet underneath them. They’d needed a discreet way to communicate with each other without giving themselves away to their boss or clients, and had settled on a list of code words with secret meanings.

Durian meant “avoid that client.” Melon meant “cause a distraction so I can get the hell out of here.” Pineapple meant “code red, all hands on deck because somebody is either actively dying or in severe distress.” 

Grapefruit meant “something big just happened, group meeting ASAP.”

Tobio sat up and scrubbed the sleep from his eyes. “Where are you?”

“Uh. About that.”

Tobio sighed, swinging his legs out of bed. He left his bedroom and crossed his tiny living room, glancing out the peephole once before wrenching his front door open. 

“Hi,” said Shouyou. His voice echoed out of Tobio’s phone speaker and Tobio hung up with a grimace. Hitoka, standing at Shouyou’s side, gave a tiny wave. 

Tobio sighed again and stood aside to let them both in. “This better be good,” he warned Shouyou. “It’s not even eight.” 

“You should just be grateful I waited this long,” Shouyou huffed in return, kicking his shoes off. “It happened like, seven whole hours ago.”

Seven whole hours ago, Tobio had been losing himself on a dance floor. Seven whole hours ago, Shouyou had been at an arcade with Hitoka. 

Speaking of—Tobio shot Hitoka a questioning glance, but she just shrugged. “I don’t know, either. I lost him at the arcade for an hour or so, and then he came tearing out of there like someone had lit him on fire. Honestly, I don’t think he’s even slept.”

“I haven’t,” Shouyou said cheerfully. 

Great. So he was going to be even  _ more _ aggravating than usual. 

Tobio shepherded them both into the kitchen/living room, yanking out a pan and turning on the burner. He pulled a carton of eggs out of the fridge and began to crack them into the pan. “Tadashi and Kei?”

“They’re on their way,” Shouyou chirped, settling into one of Tobio’s kitchen table chairs. Hitoka was already curled up on the couch. “Well, Tadashi’s on his way. He may or may not have had to drag Kei out of their apartment.”

Tobio snorted. Kei was not a morning person. 

The eggs were done by the time there was another knock on Tobio’s door. Hitoka got up and let the other two in, smiling gently at a Kei who very much looked like he’d been rolled through several bushes on his way over. 

Tobio dished out the steaming plates of breakfast, making sure that Tadashi had Kei’s well in hand so he didn’t faceplant into it. Hitoka scooted over to make room for him on the couch, and then it was four people on a piece of furniture really only meant for two, staring expectantly at Shouyou, who was still sitting at the table.

“What?” said Shouyou, through a mouthful of yolk.

“Shouyou,” Kei said with deadly calm. “You’re the one who called grapefruit. If I got out of bed before eight on a Saturday for nothing, I’m going to bury your body somewhere no one else will ever find it.” 

“Oh, right,” said Shouyou, lighting up. He nearly knocked his chair over in his rush to stand up, and then got caught in his own shirt while trying to yank it over his head. 

Hitoka squeaked and slapped her hands over her eyes; Tadashi wolf-whistled because he was nice but also knew how to be a bastard; Kei pretended to gag because he was just a bastard; and Tobio—

Tobio stayed quiet, because he’d seen what none of the others had. Shouyou’s soulmark sat low on the small of his back, stark against his pale skin. Tobio had seen it countless times when they changed together in the prep room, but it had always been empty before.

Not today. Today it sat full and dark and gleaming on the curve of Shouyou’s spine, testament to a shared kiss and the promise of a shared life. Tobio raised his eyes to Shouyou’s and found his best friend gazing back at him, tears beginning to brim over. 

There was something expanding in Tobio’s chest, a bubble of air and light. His face hurt—he was grinning so wide that his muscles were protesting the unaccustomed exercise—and Tobio stood in a clumsy hurry. “You found him?”

“At the arcade last night,” Shouyou said softly, tears slipping down his cheeks. “He’s perfect, Tobio. I always see him there and I finally got the nerve to talk to him a couple Fridays ago. I’ve liked him for a while, and then I kissed him last night and it was like. It was like the first sip of hot chocolate on a cold day. It was like . . . waking up perfectly rested. I’m so  _ happy _ .”

“Wait,” Hitoka said, opening her eyes. “Do you mean . . .” Her gaze caught on the dip of his spine. “Oh,  _ Shouyou _ .”

Tadashi sprung to his feet, flinging cooked egg everywhere, and yelled—actually yelled, at the top of his lungs. Tobio’s neighbors were going to hate him, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Yelling was the least of what he felt like doing. 

Even Kei perked up slightly, reaching out one hand to hover it over Shouyou’s soulmark. “Congratulations,” he said gruffly, and then abruptly ducked his head to “clean his glasses.” Tobio politely turned his gaze away and let him keep his pride. 

“Who is he?” Hitoka asked. “Have I met him? What’s he like? How tall is he? What color is his hair? What does he—”

“Oh,” Shouyou said. “Hold on, I have a picture I can show you guys!”

He held out his phone. The screen was occupied by an image of a man a scant handful of centimeters taller than Shouyou, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of a pair of sweatpants. His two-toned hair was pulled into a short ponytail, dark near the roots and blonde at the tips. His eyes, large and amber in color, were kind. 

“Wait,” Tadashi said, leaning closer to the picture. “He looks familiar, somehow . . .”

“YOUR SOULMATE IS WORLD-FAMOUS GAMER KODZUKEN?” Hitoka shrieked. 

Shouyou blushed to the roots of his hair. “Um, yeah, I guess.”

“You guess?” Hitoka said faintly. “I was at the same arcade as  _ world-famous gamer Kodzuken  _ for weeks? And I  _ didn’t notice _ ?”

“He’s much less recognizable in person,” Shouyou said, fiddling with his hands. “And that’s, um. That’s the second reason I called this meeting.” He put his shirt back on and sat down again, looking uncharacteristically nervous. “My soulmate is world-famous gamer Kodzuken. My Kenma. And he’s rich. Like . . . really rich. I—I told him what I do for a living, and why, and he offered . . . he said I could move in with him, if I wanted. He even said he’d pay my tuition for the next two years of university. So . . . I think I’m going to quit my job.”

Tobio stared at him. All his earlier elation had drained away, and there was a slight roaring in his ears. Never had he thought he’d hear those words from Shouyou.  _ I’m going to quit _ . They were supposed to be in it together: the five of them against the world. That’s how it had always been. That’s how Tobio had foolishly imagined it would always be.

“I told him about you guys,” Shouyou rushed on. “And I told him none of you would go for it, but he also offered to help out with your rent sometimes, or bills—”

“No,” Kei said flatly, at the same time Tadashi and Hitoka shook their heads. 

“Didn’t think so,” Shouyou murmured. 

“But—” Tobio swallowed. “But what about Hitoka? If you move out right now, she has to pay full rent until she finds a roommate. And what if she does find a roommate, but she doesn’t like them, or they’re a serial killer?”

“I wasn’t going to move out until—”

“Actually,” Tadashi interjected. “I think we have a solution to that. The guest room at mine and Kei’s place is open. We were thinking of putting up an ad for a third roommate anyway, and I’d much prefer it was Yacchan than a stranger.”

“That could work,” Hitoka said thoughtfully. “Honestly, your place is better located than mine is anyway.”

This was all moving so  _ fast _ . Tobio clenched his hands together in his lap. “Shouyou, you barely know this—this Kenma. You’ve met him a few times at an arcade. Why . . . why are you moving in with him?” 

Shouyou’s face contorted into an expression of honest confusion. “Tobio, he’s my soulmate. He’s the man I’m destined to love for the rest of my life, my perfect match. I want to be close to him.”

“You don’t know him,” Tobio said desperately. “What if he hurts you? What if he leaves you?”

“Then . . . then I’ll deal with that if and when it happens. Why are you being so difficult? I thought you’d be happy for me,” Shouyou said softly. 

“I am happy for you,” Tobio choked out. “Excuse me.” He stood up and fled into the bathroom, sitting down on the closed toilet lid and putting his face in his hands. Soulmate or not, he just couldn't understand why Shouyou was so willing to throw his life over for a near-stranger. If it were Tobio in Shouyou’s position, he’d want time. Space. He’d need to get to know his soulmates over the course of months, to see whether or not they could be trusted. He’d need his independence, so if they did turn out to be terrible people, he wouldn’t be left destitute in the aftermath. 

But Shouyou had always been like this. Throwing his heart out to people with little regard for the consequences. Trusting too easily. He’d done the same with Tobio when they’d first met—had declared, mere minutes after meeting him, that Tobio was his new best friend and he was going to stick with Tobio until the day he died. 

The bathroom door rattled and then swung inward. Tobio jerked his head up, hiding his face again when he saw it was Shouyou who’d entered.

“Rude. I could’ve been taking a shit,” he mumbled. 

“Yeah, but you weren’t,” Shouyou pointed out reasonably. He tugged Tobio’s hands away from his face gently. “What’s up with you? You’re acting even weirder than usual.”

“I—” Tobio’s breath rattled around in his chest. “Shouyou, I’m scared. For you.”

Shouyou crouched down so they were on a level. His eyes searched Tobio’s, and whatever they found there made his face soften, his mouth pursing with painful comprehension. 

“Tobio,” he said softly. “Kenma is not like your mother. And I am not like your father. Even if Kenma does . . . leave me, for whatever reason, it’s not going to destroy me. Your father was alone, and he allowed his grief to control him. I’m not alone, Tobio. I have you, and Tadashi and Hitoka and Kei, and none of you would ever let me become what he became.”

Tobio wormed his hands around in Shouyou’s grip until he was the one holding Shouyou by the wrists. “Promise me,” he said. “Promise me you won’t ever let yourself get to a place where losing Kenma would ruin you. Promise me you won’t go away.”

Shouyou froze for a moment and then cannoned forwards into Tobio’s chest, clutching handfuls of Tobio’s shirt and pulling him close. “I am not,” he said fiercely, “ _ leaving _ you.”

Tobio clung to him for an indeterminable amount of time, only pulling back when he felt something warm and wet seeping into his collar. “Gross.”

“Gross yourself,” Shouyou sob-laughed, wiping a small hand across Tobio’s damp face. He took Tobio’s cheeks in his palms and squished them together. “Stupid. I’m gonna annoy you every day for the rest of your life. Didja really think you were gonna get rid of me that easily, just because we’re not working together anymore? I have your number and I know where you live.”

“Guess so,” Tobio mumbled. He tried on a smile, for Shouyou’s benefit. This was supposed to be the happiest day of Shouyou’s life, and Tobio didn’t want to ruin that. “Um. Can I . . . meet Kenma?”

“Of course,” Shouyou beamed, jumping to his feet. “He’s great, I promise. Oh, this is gonna be so much fun! All the people I like are gonna meet and they’re gonna like each other and—”

He was still chattering as he yanked Tobio out of the bathroom and back to the living room to rejoin the others. Tobio kept his eyes on the sight of Shouyou’s fingers wrapped around his own, and tried to fight the rising tide of anxiety that was beginning to claw up the back of his throat. It was as Shouyou had said: Kenma was not like Tobio’s mother, and Shouyou was certainly not like Tobio’s father. 

It was going to be fine.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tobio scanned the hotel lobby, keeping carefully out of sight behind a pillar. The pickings were slim tonight: a woman in the corner who Hitoka was already leading away by the hand, a couple who were more preoccupied with each other than anyone else, and a man at the bar. 

The man at the bar was of the type Tobio was normally inclined to stay away from: tall and imposing, with a shuttered gaze and still-healing bruises along his knuckles. But he was the only available client, and Tobio needed the distraction. 

Shouyou’s revelation about his soulmate had been three days ago, and Tobio was still unable to escape his anxiety about the whole affair. No matter how much he tried to convince himself that it would work out okay, that Shouyou was going to be fine, worry dogged his every waking moment. 

Tobio needed to stop thinking about it. The man at the bar looked like he could  _ make _ Tobio stop thinking about it. 

Decision made, Tobio undid the topmost button of his shirt and slipped out from behind the pillar. He made eye contact with his chosen client halfway across the lobby, making sure to put an extra sway in his step. 

“Hello,” Tobio said, leaning a little closer to the man than was strictly necessary. He didn’t smile—even Shouyou agreed that his smile could be frightening—but he allowed his eyes to drift teasingly across the man’s broad shoulders, his wide chest. 

He was built like Iwaizumi, Tobio realized, and quickly pushed the errant thought away.

The client turned to face him fully, gaze caught on Tobio’s mouth. Tobio sank his upper teeth into the soft pink flesh of his bottom lip, watching with detached satisfaction as the man’s eyes darkened slightly. “Hello.” 

Tobio slid into the seat next to him. “You look lonely.”

The client snorted, not without some amusement. “Cut the shit, kid. How much for a blowjob?”

“10,000.”

One dark eyebrow arched upwards. “A little expensive, no?”

Tobio met his gaze evenly. “I’m very good.”

The client grunted, tapping the wooden surface of the bar. “Another, please. And one for my friend here as well.”

Tobio opened his mouth to protest that he didn’t drink, but then hesitated. He wanted to get out of his own head, right? Alcohol was supposed to numb you, to make you forget. He could do with some forgetting. 

The client set a glass half-full of amber-colored liquid in front of Tobio, and Tobio hardly glanced at it before tossing it down in one swallow. It burned, but Tobio managed to only cough once. 

“Steady there,” the client said, raising one arm as if to clap Tobio on the back. His sleeve slid up his arm, revealing a darkened soulmark on the inside curve of his elbow. Tobio couldn’t help the curl of his lip. Yet another person betraying the allegedly sacred covenant of the soulbond. How was he supposed to believe Shouyou and Kenma’s relationship could last when he saw shit like this almost every week? People forsook their soulmates all the time.

The client caught his disdainful look and frowned. “Shouldn’t you be more respectful?”

“No,” Tobio said plainly. “You’re not paying me to be respectful.” 

*

Briefly taken aback, Tobio shook his head. He hadn’t meant to say that aloud. There was something wrong with his vision—it was going blurry around the edges. A salty taste spread over his tongue. 

The client stood, seizing Tobio by the arm. “You’re not looking too good,” he said with false concern. “We should get you to a room.”

The drink, Tobio realized. Like a fool on his first assignation, he’d allowed the client to touch his drink. Whatever he’d put in it was both fast-acting and powerful as hell. 

Tobio slumped into the client’s grip, fighting the wave of dizziness that sent his head spinning. For the moment, he allowed the client to steer them towards the back rooms, gathering his strength. He would only have one chance. He needed to make it count. 

The client, assured of Tobio’s compliance, loosened his grip the slightest amount. Tobio instantly went entirely boneless, dragging them both to the floor with his dead weight. 

“Sorry,” Tobio slurred loudly. “Had too much to drink.” He “accidentally” drove his knee into the other man’s stomach, leaving him gasping on the floor. Unsteadily, he shoved himself to his feet. He needed to get somewhere safe.

He could go to Hitoka, but he had no idea which room she’d disappeared into and searching for her would take too much time when he could already barely see straight. He didn’t even trust himself to be able to fish his phone out of his pocket and dial one of the others for help—his fingers were shaking too badly to punch in the number correctly. 

There was only one option left open to him. Tobio ran. 

On trembling legs, Tobio shoved his way out of the hotel and emerged into the open air. The glaring street lights assaulted his senses, leaving him doubled over and retching. Swaying. Everything was  _ swaying _ . 

Tobio was barely conscious of his feet moving underneath him, carrying him to an unknown destination. He felt at once a prisoner within his body and far removed from it, spectating from above. As if on a TV screen, he watched himself stumble through city streets, eventually arriving at an apartment building that seemed vaguely familiar. 

*

Limping to a stop, Tobio was certain of only two things. One: he had, at some point, fallen down. His scraped and bleeding palms were testament to that. 

Two: he would be safe inside that building.

Lurking underneath the overhang, Tobio waited until a woman entered in front of him, and then lunged forward at the last moment, catching the door as it was about to close. He half-fell into the elevator inside the lobby, pressing the button for the fifth floor on muscle memory alone. When he stepped out, it was sheer instinct that guided him to take a left and then to walk to the eighth door along. 

Hand poised to knock above the wooden surface, Tobio hesitated. There was something stopping him. Nothing physical—something deep within his own mind was screaming at him not to take that last irrevocable step. 

Behind that door lay safety, Tobio was sure. Lay warmth and kindness and gentle hands. 

So why couldn’t he bring himself to knock?

Stepping away, Tobio put his back against the opposite wall and slid down until he was sitting with his knees against his chest. He didn’t want . . . to be a burden. A disturbance. However slim the chances, Tobio didn’t want to be turned away. He wasn’t sure if he could survive such a rejection at the moment. 

Well. Tobio was comfortable enough where he was, he supposed. He crossed his arms across his aching knees and pillowed his head on his elbows. The dark tide that had been pulling at the edges of his consciousness finally succeeded in loosening his grip on awareness entirely, and Tobio fell into a spiraling emptiness with something like relief.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shouyou remains the most relatable character in my opinion. Who /hasn't/ lovingly threatened to annoy their friends for the rest of the foreseeable future as a means of expressing affection? 
> 
> Also: internet cookies for you if you can guess where exactly Tobio ended up at the end of this chapter ;)


	7. Seven

“It’s your turn.”

“No, it’s not.”

“I did it last time!”

“Shut the fuck up, Shittykawa, you did not.”

“Yes, I  _ did _ .”

“No, you  _ didn’t _ , because you  _ never do _ .”

Tooru pouted at his soulmate, fluttering his lashes becomingly. “Pleeeeeeease, Hajime? I’m so warm and comfortable—”

Hajime planted his foot on Tooru’s hip and shoved, sending Tooru tumbling off the couch with a yelp of surprise. Tooru whined, clutching at his smarting tailbone. “Mean, Iwa-chan!”

“Now you’re not so warm and comfortable,” Hajime grunted. “Problem solved. Go take out the trash.”

Tooru grumbled under his breath but stood, heading to the kitchen and heaving the bulging trash bag out of the can. It was the only chore they fought over, because Tooru hated going outside when it was cold but Hajime hated the smell. 

Tooru dragged the bag back through the living room, making sure to pull an ugly face at Hajime as he passed. Hajime didn’t even glance up, but somehow managed to flip him off directly anyway. 

Stuffing his feet into the pair of slippers by the rug, Tooru propped the door open with his hip and wrestled the bag outside. If he sped-walk, he could make it in and out of the building in four minutes. Four minutes, and then he could be back in the warmth of his apartment, with his blanket and his cup of tea and his Iwa-chan . . . 

Tooru took a single step into the hallway and froze. A lump of fabric had been discarded against the opposite wall, and it was  _ movin _ g. Heart hammering, Tooru dropped the bag. He prepared to run back inside the apartment, to slam the door and lock it, but something held him fast. 

The fabric shifted again, revealing a sliver of pale skin and crow-wing-black hair. 

“Hajime,” said Tooru.

A groan sounded from further inside the apartment. “I’m not helping you.”

“Hajime.”

“I know you’re perfectly capable of lifting a seven-pound bag, Shittykawa.”

“ _ Hajime _ .”

Something about his tone must have tipped Hajime off, because there was a brief moment of silence before his soulmate’s feet pounded against the wooden floor, and then Tooru found himself shoved unceremoniously aside as Hajime pushed protectively in front of him.

“Tooru?  _ Oh _ .” 

“What’s wrong with him? Why isn’t he waking up?” Tooru asked anxiously, kneeling at Kageyama’s side. He shook the younger boy’s shoulders. “Tobio-chan? Tobio?  _ Hey _ . Kageyama, can you hear me?”

The shaking did nothing save shift Kageyama’s head from one side to the other, exposing the long, slim column of his throat. He looked even paler than usual, dark shadows etched underneath his stubbornly closed eyes. Shallow breaths puffed past his chapped lips. 

Even wrecked, he was beautiful. Tooru forced the thought away. 

“I don’t know,” Hajime said quietly, meeting Tooru’s eyes over Kageyama’s bowed head. “But we should get him inside. He came to us . . .  _ almost _ came to us, for a reason.”

“Of course,” Tooru said. He stood aside as Hajime slid one arm beneath Kageyama’s drawn-up knees and the other behind Kageyama’s back. He made it look easy when he stood with Kageyama cradled against his chest, as if Kageyama were a child and not a full-grown man standing over 190 centimeters tall. 

Shoving the trash bag aside, Tooru held the door open so Hajime could enter the apartment. He trailed nervously behind Hajime as he walked to the bedroom, laying Kageyama down gently on their unmade sheets. Tooru turned one of Kageyama’s hands over delicately, wincing when he saw the dried blood caked into the abrasions on his palms.

Hajime’s lips pinched together. “I’ll get the first aid kit.”

Tooru settled himself next to Kageyama on the bed, brushing his hair off his forehead with gentle fingers. He looked . . . small. 

Kageyama was always full of presence, brimming over with frustrated energy and bridled intensity. When all that vigor had been stripped from him, it left him looking so damn young. Even more than usual, Tooru was seized by the desire to take Kageyama into his arms, to protect him against the world—against whatever it was that had happened to him that made his eyes go dark when he thought nobody was watching. 

Hajime re-entered the room, setting the first aid kit down by the foot of the bed. He worked Kageyama’s boots off and set them on the floor, pausing with one hand on Kageyama’s knee. He took his hand back, frowning at the dirt that now coated his palm. 

“What . . .”

Tooru understood first, with a sickening drop in his stomach. The scraped hands—the dirtied knees—

“He crawled,” Tooru whispered. “He came to us, and when he couldn’t walk anymore, he  _ crawled _ .”

Something rose in Tooru’s chest at the realization, a mixture of terror and protective fury. For one blinding instant, Tooru wanted to find whoever had done this to Kageyama and utterly destroy them, discover what they loved most and excise it from them with the cold precision of a surgeon—

“Gods,” Hajime spat, bringing Tooru back to himself. “What  _ happened _ ?”

Tooru slipped his fingers into the front pocket of Kageyama’s pants, extracting his phone. His passcode was 1111. That particular fact had seemed funny when Tooru had first discovered it, with Kageyama sitting at their kitchen table in the light of day and scowling when Tooru used his phone to take selfie after selfie. 

It was not funny now. 

Tooru flipped through Kageyama’s contact list, considering. There were only seven: Hajime, Tooru himself, Kageyama’s four friends from the hotel, and a number simply labeled “Miwa.” 

Tooru hovered his finger over Hinata’s number. If someone knew what had happened to Kageyama, surely it would be the man Kageyama had once reluctantly admitted was his best friend. 

But—Kageyama talked about his friends a lot. From listening to him, Tooru had gathered a certain amount of information: Hinata was the bright core of their little group, their beating heart. Tsukishima kept them grounded, and Yachi kept them hopeful. It was Yamaguchi who looked after them all. 

Decision made, Tooru pressed the number labeled “Tadashi.”

The phone only rang twice before it was picked up. “Tobio?” came a sleepy male voice. “What’s up?”

“Not Tobio, I’m afraid,” Tooru admitted with a swallow. Hajime laid a hand on his shoulder, pausing in gently cleaning the grit out of Kageyama’s palms. “This is Oikawa.”

“Oikawa-san,” Yamaguchi said, suddenly sounding far more awake. “What’s going on? Where’s Tobio?”

“He’s here at our place,” Tooru said, glancing down at Kageyama’s sleeping face. His chest constricted. “But as to what’s going on . . . I was hoping you could answer that. I found him unconscious in the hallway a little while ago. He won’t—he won’t wake up.”

“I see.” Yamaguchi’s voice was steady, calming the anxiety that had set Tooru’s hands shaking. “How’s his breathing?”

“A little shallow.”

“No vomiting, though? No seizures?”

“No, thank gods. But his hands are all scraped up. I think he fell down a couple times on his way over here.”

“Okay.” A series of rustles from the other end of the line, as if someone were hurriedly getting out of bed. “I think I know what’s going on. Tobio had a shift at the hotel earlier tonight. There are certain . . . risks to our profession. When a client doesn’t think they can get what they want from us through legitimate means, they will often turn to less than legitimate ones. Obvious disorientation, dizziness, prolonged unconsciousness . . . I think somebody gave Tobio a spiked drink.” 

Tooru’s fingers tightened around the phone. “You think someone  _ drugged _ him?” Hajime’s eyes darted up to meet his, lips thinning with concern.

“I do.” Another string of rustles. “Listen, Oikawa-san. I really appreciate what you’ve done for Tobio so far. It was very kind of you to take him in. If you’ll give me your address, I promise I’ll be there as soon as I can to pick him up. Hey, Kei. Kei, babe, wake up. We have to go get Tobio.”

“That’s not necessary,” Tooru said quickly. His resistance to letting Kageyama out of his sight was fierce and bone-deep, borne of a possessive instinct so strong he even shocked himself slightly. “We can look after him here, ourselves. He even came to us, right?”

A weighty pause. “That he did,” Yamaguchi said. “Hm. Alright. He should be able to sleep the worst of it off, though he’ll have a wicked headache in the morning.”

“Noted,” Tooru said. “Hey—is there any way you could find out who did this to him? Are there security cameras in that hotel?”

“No security cams. But I can ask around.”

“And then what?”

Yamaguchi laughed. It was not a mirthful sound. “And then we hookers look after our own. Please . . . please take care of him, Oikawa-san.”

“I promise,” Tooru said. The line went dead, and he slid the phone back into Kageyama’s pocket. 

“A date rape drug,” Hajime said. To any other observer, he would have looked calm, securing the gauze around Kageyama’s hand with a piece of athletic tape. To Tooru, who could read the minute lines around his eyes and the tension in the line of his shoulders, he was radiating fury. 

“Guess so,” said Tooru, equally cold. 

Hajime finished his ministrations and carefully folded Kageyama’s arms in close to his chest. They were both silent, staring down at his sleeping face. 

So small. 

So young. 

So fucking fragile. 

Tooru reached an absent hand back to trace over the empty mark on his shoulderblade. 

Nudging Tooru gently out of the way, Hajime brought the covers up to Kageyama’s chin. “What now?”

Tooru kept his eyes fixed to the rapid rise and fall of Kageyama’s chest under the blankets. “We wait until morning.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hajime slept on the couch that night. 

Tooru didn’t sleep at all; in fact, he was still awake when there was a sudden cry from the bedroom, followed by a loud thump.

Tooru shoved himself away from his seat at the kitchen table and ran. Flinging the bedroom door open, he found Kageyama fighting a losing battle against the sheets, tangled up on the floor with his lower half still on the bed. 

“Tobio-chan,” Tooru said, his utter relief escaping him in a laugh. “Tobio-chan, calm down.”

But Kageyama didn’t calm down; if anything, his panic seemed to escalate as he thrashed around, hands scrabbling ineffectually at the sheets. 

“Kageyama—”

Hajime brushed by Tooru in the doorway and stripped the sheets away from Kageyama with one powerful movement, leaving him free to tumble fully to the ground. He reached for Kageyama to help him up, but Kageyama scrabbled away from him until his back hit the wall. 

“Miwa?” Kageyama croaked, eyes wide with alarm.

Tooru crouched so his face re-entered Kageyama’s line of sight. “No,” he said gently. “It’s me, Tooru. And Hajime.”

“Oikawa-san,” Kageyama breathed, hostility bleeding out of his posture. He dropped his hands from where they had risen to shield his face. “Um. Where—”

“Our apartment,” Hajime said. “Our bedroom, more specifically.”

“Oh,” said Kageyama. He still looked—lost. 

Tooru stood back up, crossing the room to extract a loose shirt and a pair of his athletic shorts from a dresser drawer. He offered the outfit to Kageyama. “We found you passed out in the hallway last night. Why don’t you change, and then we can have breakfast, and you can tell us what happened?”

Kageyama took the clothing, a red flush spreading across his cheekbones. He wouldn’t meet Tooru’s eyes. “Alright,” he said faintly. 

Tooru turned to leave, giving Hajime a significant look on his way out. Something—something beyond the aftermath of a drugged drink—was up. 

When Kageyama shuffled out of the bedroom five minutes later, he brought himself to a taut halt in front of the kitchen table. Tooru was already seated, sipping a steaming cup of coffee. Its twin sat at the other end of the table: two sugars and an inordinate amount of milk, just how Kageyama liked it. 

Tooru dragged his eyes assessingly over Kageyama’s body, searching for any lingering signs of dizziness or confusion. They were about the same height, so Tooru’s clothes fit Kageyama quite well, but there was just something about seeing Kageyama in a faded old Aobajosai t-shirt that made Tooru tighten his hand around his mug, imagining it was warm skin underneath his fingertips instead of chilled porcelain.

Hajime finished rattling around in the cabinets and joined Tooru at the table, laying out three sets of utensils. “There you are,” he said, glancing up at Kageyama. “How are you feeling?” 

That question seemed to be Kageyama’s breaking point, for he abruptly folded over into a ninety degree bow, hands clenched into fists at his sides. “I’m sorry,” he blurted. “I didn’t mean to—disturb you last night. I don’t know what I was thinking, I shouldn’t have—”

“Of course you should have,” Tooru said sharply. “Don’t be ridiculous, Tobio-chan. You were in trouble, you came to us. It’s as simple as that.”

Kageyama peeked up at him through the dark fringe of his hair. “You’re not . . . mad?”

“No,” Hajime said, so firmly that Kageyama actually seemed to believe it. He straightened up tentatively, eyeing the coffee cup with something like desperation.

“That’s for you,” Tooru said. “And so is this.” He slid a paper cup over to Kageyama, rattling the two pain pills inside. 

“Don’t take them dry,” Hajime scolded, when it became apparent that Kageyama planned to do just that. He shepherded Kageyama into a seat, placing a steaming plate full of rice in front of him. Tooru accepted his own plate, watching for several long moments as Kageyama shoveled rice into his mouth before setting his fork down. 

“I called your friend Yamaguchi last night,” Tooru said. “Iwa-chan and I weren’t sure what was wrong with you, but he was pretty confident you’d been drugged.”

Kageyama swallowed. His gaze fell to the table. “I was. It was . . . stupid of me.”

Hajime set his own fork down with a clink. “Kageyama. It wasn’t your fault.”

“It was, though.” His mouth twisted bitterly. “I know better than to take drinks from strangers, especially at the hotel bar.”

“You . . . were drinking?” Tooru frowned. Kageyama didn’t drink—he refused the offer, every time they went out dancing. 

Kageyama folded in on himself, hunching his shoulders and pulling his arms into his chest. “I was upset.”

So this was it, then. Something had been bothering Kageyama all week, hovering over him like a dark cloud at his and Hajime’s tutoring sessions. 

“Shouyou’s going to quit his job,” Kageyama burst out. “He met his soulmate a few days ago and apparently he’s really rich. He offered to let Shouyou move in with him, and he’s even going to pay his tuition.”

_ Oh _ . Tooru set his coffee cup down. “You feel like you’re losing him.”

Kageyama nodded miserably. “I’m happy for him, and he said he’d visit, but . . .”

“If it’s any consolation,” Hajime said. “I’ve seen the way you two act around each other. He doesn’t seem the type to let go easily.”

No, he definitely did not. A small part of Tooru was glad that Hinata had found his soulmate, even if it meant that he was going to quit his job. Maybe then he’d stop hanging off of Kageyama so much. 

Kageyama pulled his phone out of his pocket, cursing softly when he saw the time. “I’m sorry, I really need to go. I have class in forty minutes.”

“Surely you can skip one day,” Tooru began, but Kageyama was already shaking his head.

“I need a good grade in this class. Thank you again for letting me stay, and for breakfast. I promise I’ll make it up to you somehow. Ah—” He pulled at Tooru’s shirt, a question in his eyes. 

“Keep it,” said Tooru. “You can give it back next time you come over.” Or never. Tooru would be fine with that, too.

Kageyama gathered up his dirty clothing, shoving his feet back into his boots. He turned around once more at the front door, and his face was so full of amazed gratitude that it made the tips of Tooru’s ears burn.

“I want to tell him,” Tooru said, as soon as the door swung shut behind him. “Hajime, we need to tell him.”

Hajime eyed him. “Tell him what?”

“That he’s our soulmate!”

Hajime sighed, pushing his plate away. “Tooru, first of all, we agreed to take it slow. It’s been like . . . six weeks since we met him for the first time.”

Tooru leaned forward, planting his hands on the table. “He got drugged, Hajime. The first night we met him, some asshole was assaulting him in an alleyway. Hinata had a wine bottle smashed over his head. His job is  _ dangerous _ . You heard what Hinata’s soulmate is doing for him—we could do the same for Kageyama. Convince him to move in with us, help him get a different job. I want him out of that fucking hotel, Hajime, and I want him out of that shitty apartment.”

“Tooru . . . we don’t even know that he  _ is _ our soulmate.” But there was something like hope in Hajime’s eyes, a tilt to his mouth that suggested he was seriously considering the merits of talking to Kageyama sooner rather than later.

“Tell me he’s not,” Tooru said fiercely, standing and circling the table until he could take Hajime’s hands in his. “Tell me he’s not, when he came to  _ us _ . He could’ve gone anywhere—home, to Yamaguchi and Tsukishima’s place—but he came here. That’s the effect of a soulbond. He knew he’d be safe with us.”

Hajime leaned forward, resting his head against Tooru’s shoulder. “But what if he’s not? What if we’re wrong?”

“Then we’re wrong,” Tooru said with a shrug. “Then we have a friend instead of a soulmate. But Hajime . . . when have I ever been wrong about this sort of thing? I knew you were mine, even before we kissed that first time. You made me feel like I could do anything, be anything—like I could take on the entire world and win. I feel the same way with Kageyama.”

Being around Hajime had calmed him even at seven, at twelve, at eighteen; quieted the voices in Tooru’s mind that were always screaming at him that he would never be enough. Kageyama had much the same effect—he forced Tooru out of his own head and into the present. He was an adorably complex tangle of emotions, and Tooru delighted in studying him, learning what made him tick. Every laugh, every smile, every scrunched-up face of irritation that Tooru teased out of Kageyama, was a victory. Tooru wanted more. He wanted to spend the rest of his life unraveling Kageyama’s every minute shift in expression and attitude, until there was nothing between them. He wanted Kageyama laid bare, three hearts aligned in perfect understanding of each other.

Hajime tugged Tooru forwards until Tooru was sitting on his lap, slim thighs bracketing Hajime’s more muscular ones. “You’re not worried about being replaced anymore? You’re not jealous?”

“Not really,” Tooru murmured into the top of Hajime’s head. “The more time I spend around him, the more I realize . . . he doesn’t want to replace me in your affections. Or you in mine. He likes us both, I think. But he wouldn’t dream of trying to drive us apart.”

“I wouldn’t let him.” Hajime pulled away from Tooru’s chest, looking up at him with such intensity that Tooru shivered. “You know that, right? I like him, I really do. But I’ve spent my life with you, Tooru. And nothing— _ nothing _ —is ever going to make me leave you.”

Tooru’s heart swelled. He must’ve been a war hero in his past life, to deserve someone like Hajime. “And you call  _ me _ possessive,” he teased, just to see Hajime blush. 

Hajime snorted, burying his head back into Tooru’s collar. “Shut up, Shittykawa. So you’re really okay with this? Accepting him into our bond?”

“I am,” Tooru said. “In fact, the only people I’m jealous of are those clients of his.” It made something dark and ugly stir in Tooru’s chest, thinking of other people in Kageyama’s bed, other people’s hands on Kageyama’s body. The fact that Kageyama’s job endangered him was the primary reason Tooru wanted him to quit; but he wouldn’t deny there were other reasons, too. 

Hajime’s hands tightened on Tooru’s hips. “Let’s not talk about that,” he growled. For all his pretending otherwise, he was just as possessive as Tooru was. 

“Next time,” Tooru breathed, angling his lips to slot against Hajime’s. “We’ll tell him next time.”

“Yes,” Hajime agreed, and then there was very little talking at all. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're finally getting somewhere with regards to a confession, folks! :)
> 
> (Also, if you or a friend think you've ingested a drugged drink: please do not try and "sleep it off," oh my god. That's simply what needed to happen for the convenience of this fic. Please go to the hospital immediately.)


	8. Eight

Tobio pressed the button that would take him to the fifth floor, shifting his books to his left arm. The floor jolted under him, sending a brief spike of nausea up his spine, and he was uncomfortably reminded of the last time he’d been in this elevator, drugged half out of his mind and desperate. Oikawa and Iwaizumi had taken that whole episode much better than Tobio had dared to expect—not only had they let him into their apartment, into their bed, they hadn’t even seemed angry at him in the morning. 

Tobio exited the elevator and took a left, stopping before the eighth door down. Iwaizumi had been oddly insistent about this particular tutoring session. Tobio had offered to stop and pick up a meal on the way over, but Iwaizumi had nearly  _ demanded _ that he didn’t. 

Not that Tobio minded. More time he got to spend with Oikawa and Iwaizumi was always time well spent. 

Tobio raised his hand, but the door swung open before he had the chance to knock. 

“There you are, Tobio-chan,” Oikawa purred, leaning forward with one hand on the doorframe. He looked good—he always looked good—but there was an extra radiance about him today, a glow that seemed to emanate from beneath his skin. Even his eyes seemed brighter, his smile wider. 

Tobio swallowed, and tore his eyes away. 

Oikawa reached forward and fastened one warm, slender hand around Tobio’s wrist. “Come in, come in,” he trilled, pulling Tobio into the apartment. “Iwa-chan has been  _ dying _ to see you.”

“Don’t make it weird!” Iwaizumi snapped as they entered the kitchen, irritation pinching the crease between his eyebrows. “Besides, it’s not like you’re not any better, Shittykawa. You’re the one who got up at four in the morning to clean the entire apartment because you were too excited to sleep.”

Looking around, Tobio observed that the apartment did indeed seem cleaner than usual: the kitchen counters gleamed, and the sink was absent of any dishes. Even the spices stacked under one cabinet were meticulously organized by container size.

“Um,” Tobio said. “What are you so excited—”

“Why don’t you sit down,” Oikawa said sweetly, pulling out a chair at the table with a flourish. 

Tobio sat, glancing at the upperclassman out of the corner of his eye. He was acting odd, but Tobio wasn’t so conceited as to think it concerned him, so he brushed the matter away with a mental shrug. He set his books down on the table in front of him, flipping the Social Stats textbook open to Chapter Twelve. “Professor Masuda brought up something in class last time about, ah, lines of regression? I understand the general principle, but not really how to apply—”

“Tobio.” 

His given name in Iwaizumi’s mouth stopped Tobio cold. Oh, he  _ liked _ that. He slowly raised his eyes to Iwaizumi’s to find the other man staring intently back at him, something unfathomable in his gaze. 

“Let’s put the books away,” Iwaizumi said softly. 

Tobio swallowed, and complied. He wasn’t always the best at reading social cues, but even he could tell that the atmosphere had just shifted, that he was treading new and dangerous territory. His heart began to pound. This was going to be about the other day, he was almost sure of it. He’d been a fool to think that he could’ve imposed upon them in such a manner without some form of consequence. They were angry at him; or worse, they were going to tell him they didn’t want him to come around anymore. 

“I’m sorry,” he blurted, just as Oikawa reached forward and covered Tobio’s hand with his own. 

“About what?” Iwaizumi prompted after a pause, but it was like all the breath had been stolen from Tobio’s lungs. His every molecule was attuned to that singular point of contact, the feeling of Oikawa’s palm resting over his knuckles, Oikawa’s fingers gently stroking the sensitive skin of his wrist. 

“I—” Tobio stuttered. “Uh—”

Oikawa turned to Iwaizumi and sighed. They were sitting so close together Oikawa was nearly on Iwaizumi’s lap, both of them facing Tobio across the table. “How did we agree to do this, again?”

“We agreed,” Iwaizumi said pointedly, “that you would start.”

“But look at him,” Oikawa whined. “He’s so nervous, Iwa-chan.”

“And whose fault is that?” Iwaizumi hissed, with a sharp look at where Oikawa was still holding Tobio’s hand. 

Oikawa turned to Tobio with a pout. “Do you not like this, Tobio-chan?”

“It’s fine,” Tobio croaked.

“See! He said it’s fine.”

“Whatever,” Iwaizumi said with a sigh. “I’ll start, then. Tobio, how do you feel about polybonds?”

“They’re . . . okay,” Tobio said cautiously. He wasn’t sure why he was being asked such a question. Almost unconsciously, his free hand rose to brush against his sternum. 

“We think polybonds are okay too,” Iwaizumi said. “In fact, did you know that Tooru and I  _ are _ polybonded?”

Tobio went cold all over, feeling his heart plummet towards his toes. It was what had happened with Shouyou all over again. They’d found their third partner, and now they were going to leave. That’s why they’d asked him over today; that’s why they were acting so strangely.

But, wait. That didn’t make  _ sense _ . 

“No, you’re not,” he said, reflexively. “At the hospital, I saw—” He clamped his mouth shut. It was rude to comment on other people’s soulmarks. 

“Saw what, Tobio-chan?” Oikawa asked, leaning forwards. Behind his glasses, his eyes were sharp, and Tobio could sense that fearsome intelligence stirring, bent to putting together the pieces of a puzzle Tobio couldn’t even see. 

“Iwaizumi-san’s soulmark,” Tobio said softly. “His sleeve fell back, and I saw it. There was only one.”

Iwaizumi laid his arm across the table, turning it palm-up. He undid the button at his wrist with steady fingers, and slowly pushed the sleeve up towards his elbow.

Tobio’s breath caught. There, on the sun-tanned inside of Iwaizumi’s wrist, laid directly across his pulse point, were two soulmarks. One filled and one empty. 

“What?” Tobio breathed. “But—”

“I cover the empty one up with concealer when I go out,” Iwaizumi said. “I’m sure you know that people aren’t always kind to the polybonded, and my marks are so visible . . . sometimes it’s just easier not to have to deal with the looks, the comments, that sort of thing.”

“Oh,” Tobio said faintly. His vision had narrowed to that bronze strip of skin on Iwaizumi’s wrist, the soulmarks seeming to wink at him mockingly. 

Oikawa’s hand tightened on his. “Tobio. Did you think—did you think that Hajime and I were only bonded to each other?”

Tobio nodded, even though the word ‘think’ didn’t seem to do justice to the way his impression that Iwaizumi and Oikawa were exclusive had consumed him. 

“Oh gods,” Oikawa said, slapping his free hand to his forehead. “I was so sure you liked us—I couldn’t figure out why you kept pushing us away. But of course you would, wouldn’t you, if you thought you were interrupting a two-way soulbond?”

“Wait,” Tobio said. “How did you know that I—” He blushed, mortified. Oikawa had already guessed his secret, of course—that he  _ liked _ the two upperclassmen—but Tobio hadn't had to go and confirm it like that. He wished, not for the first time, that he was a little better at lying. 

“Oh, Kageyama.” Iwaizumi’s tone was gentle. “You’re not exactly subtle. You pretty much stopped breathing every time Shittykawa over here got into your space even slightly, and you go bright red every time I tell you you’re doing a good job on your problem sets.”

Tobio felt his already-present flush intensify, spreading down his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose.

“Yes,” Iwaizumi said. “Just like that.”

Tobio ducked his head. He was still uncertain what the point of this meeting was—they were going to reject him, right? Let him down gently? Gently, because they were good people who handled others with care. “I can go now, if you want.”

“Go?” Iwaizumi said. “Kageyama, why would you  _ go _ ?”

Oikawa, impossibly, began to laugh. “Stupid Tobio-chan,” he said fondly. “Hajime, he still doesn’t get it.” He stood from his seat and circled toward Tobio, crouching in front of Tobio’s seat so they were on a level. The hand on Tobio’s wrist slid smoothly up his arm and across his chest, leaving a trail of tingling fire in its wake.

“Here,” Oikawa murmured, when his fingers were resting directly over Tobio’s sternum. “They’re here, aren’t they? Your soulmarks, I can  _ feel _ them. Tell me they’re both empty.”

Tobio finally understood, in one moment of earth-shattering comprehension. “You think I’m your—”

“I know it,” Oikawa said, his eyes ablaze. “Kiss me, and know it too.”

Tobio stared at Oikawa. Trust and faith and unshakable hope were shining out of the other man’s face, backed by a steel certainty that firmed the line of his lips. 

Tobio wanted this. He’d wanted this from the moment he’d laid eyes on them in that alleyway; wanted it every day since, in a library basement and on a sidewalk outside a grocery store and in the strobing lights of a club. He’d ached for it. Something had tethered him to this place, to these people, drawing him in even while drugged and delirious. If that wasn’t a soulbond, Tobio didn’t know what was. 

However, Tobio couldn’t deny that he was afraid. How many bonds had he seen broken in that hotel, as he lay with men and women with dark soulmarks gleaming on thighs and stomachs and the inside curves of knees? How many dreams had died in that place that Tobio refused to call home, sacrificed to the desolate anger of a man who could not live without the woman who’d sealed his destiny with a kiss? 

But—

I am not my father, Tobio thought, and leaned forward. 

His mouth met Oikawa’s, and the world broke open. It was—

—the sweeping score of an orchestra playing at full volume, cymbals crashing in beautiful counterpoint to the fluid tones of a piano—

—the gentle warmth of a summer sun, cloudless blue skies vaulting above—

—a hand holding his, steadfast and sure despite the fire that tore at their wrists—

It was coming home. Tobio pulled back with a sob. Oikawa caught him by the back of his neck and reeled him in again, pulling until their foreheads rested against each other. 

“See?” Oikawa breathed against his lips. “I’m always right.”

“You’re an asshole is what you are,” Iwaizumi said from somewhere above. “How is that the first thing you think to say?”

“Sorry, Tobio-chan,” Oikawa sang, a brilliant smile turning the corners of his mouth up. 

His mouth. Which Tobio had just kissed with  _ his _ mouth. If there was an appropriate amount of time to stare at someone else’s lower lip, Tobio had surely surpassed it by now. 

Oikawa rested a fingertip lightly in the divot between Tobio’s collarbones, dragging the neck of his shirt down his chest. Tobio’s eyes followed helplessly, his breath hitching when he saw the incontrovertible proof of Oikawa’s claim that they were soulmates: one dark mark, full and bright. 

Oikawa left his finger on the mark, sending a shivery, pleasant warmth down Tobio’s spine. “You’re ours now,” he said smugly. “And we’re gonna keep you forever and ever.”

“All this talk about ‘ours’ and ‘we’ and you’re still hogging him,” Iwaizumi said impatiently. “Can you move that massive ego of yours out of the way for two seconds, please?”

“Mean, Iwa-chan!” Oikawa screeched, but he moved to stand. 

Almost unconsciously, Tobio’s hand darted out and tangled in the front of his shirt. “Don’t—”

Oikawa’s eyes softened. “I’m not going anywhere.” He moved so that he was standing behind Tobio, the warmth of him pressed up along Tobio’s back. “See?”

Tobio nodded, staring up at Iwaizumi. Iwaizumi didn’t crouch like Oikawa had; instead, he reached down with one broad hand and laid it to the side of Tobio’s face. Tobio turned his face into his palm slightly, closing his eyes. It was almost a surprise when he felt Iwaizumi’s lips on his, a gently demanding pressure that Tobio was more than glad to concede to. 

Even though Tobio knew what to expect, the rush of sensations was still as overwhelming as it had been the first time. Iwaizumi felt different—a little steadier, a little cooler—but not worse and not better. Just different. 

“Oh,” Iwaizumi murmured, after he’d pulled away. “Oh, that feels—” He stared down at his wrist, now complete with two matching marks. An incredulous laugh bubbled out of him and he leaned down to crush Tobio into a hug. “We were looking for you for so long,” he said fiercely, tucking Tobio’s head under his chin. “ _ Finally _ .”

Tobio closed his eyes, basking in the feeling of being surrounded by warmth. This all seemed somewhat unreal to him, a scenario plucked out of his wildest dreams. But even if it was a dream, Tobio was going to hold on as long as he could. Tentatively, he leaned back into Oikawa slightly, bringing his arms up to wrap around Iwaizumi’s waist. 

“You’re okay with this?” he whispered. “You’re okay that it’s me?”

“Okay?” Oikawa laughed. “Tobio, you idiot, it’s more than okay. We were hoping it was you. We want this. We want  _ you _ .”

Tobio clung a little harder, burying his face in Iwaizumi’s shirt. He wanted so badly to return the sentiment, to assure them that he wanted them, too, but—he couldn’t. Not yet. 

Tobio needed time. He liked Oikawa and Iwaizumi an awful lot, and if given the choice, would have picked them to be his soulmates a thousand times over, but they’d only known each other a little less than two months. 

Two months wasn’t enough time to really get to know someone, to trust them not to hurt you. Tobio needed to take this slowly and cautiously; to be allowed to fumble his way through the relationship at his own pace. He needed dates—proper dates—and long conversations, and hours spent learning his soulmates’ every quirk until Tobio could be sure when handing them his heart that they would treat it kindly.

So yes, Tobio needed time. But here, in this embrace, between two of the best people he knew, it seemed for once that he had nothing  _ but _ time. 

“Thank you,” he said, to whom he wasn’t sure—Oikawa and Iwaizumi, or maybe the universe at large, for giving him this chance that he knew he didn’t deserve. “ _ Thank you _ .”

He finally allowed himself to begin to cry then, small gasps that shuddered out of him with terrible force. He half-expected the others to pull away, but they didn’t—they only held him close, and whispered with soft voices that they would still be there when he was done. 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Wallet, please,” said the guard, and Tobio nearly shoved it into her hands. She gave him an odd look, and Tobio was for once pretty sure he knew why: not only had he forgotten his jacket at Iwai—at  _ Hajime _ and  _ Tooru _ ’s place—he was practically dancing from foot to foot with impatience, and his eyes were probably still swollen from crying. 

“You can go through,” she said, handing the article back to him, and Tobio darted through the security sensors. He speed-walked down the long hallway, shoving his way through the double doors at the end with such force that they hit the wall and rebounded backwards. 

Miwa was already sitting in her chair behind the glass, waiting patiently with the phone held to her ear. She smiled at him, opening her mouth to greet him, but Tobio seized the phone on his end and almost-yelled, “MIWA” before she got the chance. 

“Tobio,” she said with amusement clear in her tone. “You’re . . . in a good mood.”

“I am,” said Tobio. “I am. I’m—in the best mood.”

They stared at each other wordlessly for the next few moments: Miwa obviously waiting for him to spill, and Tobio so full of pent-up emotion that he couldn’t actually get the words out of his mouth. How did he explain the dizzying euphoria that had overtaken him? How did he express the indescribable joy, the sense of wholeness and bone-deep satisfaction? His whole body felt light, as if he were walking on air. He’d been in the same blissful daze since leaving his  _ soulmates’ _ apartment thirty minutes earlier. 

“Fuck it,” Tobio said in a rush, and stood. He stripped his shirt off with one smooth motion, and stood bare-chested before his sister, shivering with anticipation. “I—it happened.  _ It happened _ .”

“Sir,” said a guard in the corner, straightening up out of her slouch. “Sir, you can’t do that.”

Miwa was utterly still, knuckles gone white. Her eyes darted at once to the filled-in soulmarks in the middle of his chest (Tobio had spent twenty minutes in the bathroom just  _ looking _ at them, giddy and incredulous), and her mouth dropped open, the phone slipping from her bloodless fingers. Tobio was glad for that half a second later, as the shriek that pealed out of her throat was so loud he heard it even through the glass. “Tobio, you little brat! No fucking way!”

“Yes fucking way,” Tobio nodded, a smile stretching across his face. He folded his arms across his chest, fighting the urge to jump up and down like a child.

“Without me?” she demanded, pressing one hand against the glass. “Oh, you bastard—it’s those upperclassmen of yours, isn’t it? The nice ones that you go dancing with? I knew it—oh my god, I  _ knew _ it. They’re so in love with you it’s not even funny—”

“Sir,” the guard said again, placing one hand on his shoulder. “Please put your shirt back on.” 

Tobio shrugged her off in favor of crowding closer to the glass. “You knew? How did you know? I  _ told _ you Hajime only had one soulmark—”

“Hajime?” Miwa said, raising one dark eyebrow. “Given names already? Oh, we are  _ so _ going to have a talk when I get out of here. And yes, of course I knew! It was some sort of misunderstanding, wasn’t it, the one soulmark thing? They invited you to their apartment  _ twice a week _ , for gods’ sakes, Tobio.”

“Sir, I really must insist—”

“How am I the actual last person to know they liked me,” Tobio complained, “this is so unfair—”

“Sir, please—”

“It’s because you’re fucking dense, Tobio,” Miwa snorted, eyes glittering with amusement. “How many times have I told you that you need to pay more attention to other people?”

“Take that back, I am not fucking  _ dense _ —” 

“That’s it,” the guard snapped, wrapping one arm firmly around Tobio’s bare bicep and tugging. “Sir, I must insist you vacate the premises at once.”

Digging his heels in, Tobio managed to snag the phone for one last reply. “I’m gonna take it slow,” he shouted into the speaker, struggling against the restraining hands on his shoulders. “Hey, get  _ off _ —but—I think this could be something, Miwa. I think—I think this could really  _ be  _ something.”

Despite the less than dignified exit he was making, Tobio’s smile continued to spread, making the corners of his mouth ache. He’d never thought she would be anything else, but Miwa was happy for him too, and Tobio felt even better knowing she approved. His head was already full of plans on how he was going to introduce her to Hajime and Tooru once she was out of prison. They were going to love her, he just knew it. 

The last glimpse Tobio got of his sister before he was escorted out of the double doors was of her with one fist thrown in the air, whooping in absolute joy. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you tell that I have a sibling who I love dearly but also sometimes want to punch in the face?
> 
> Anyway, I think there will be around four to five more chapters? There are obviously quite a few plot points that need to be tied up, and one /major/ conflict that still needs to be resolved. So, uh, get ready for the angst next chapter. I'll say I'm sorry in advance.


	9. Nine

“You got  _ kicked out _ ? By  _ security _ ?”

“Yep,” Tobio admitted, shoving his hands in his pockets. “They even made me put my shirt back on.”

“Oh my god,” Hitoka said faintly. “Tobio, you’re practically a delinquent.”

“Hardly,” Kei snorted. “He’s just a grade-A dumbass. Honestly, what did you expect to happen?”

“I don’t know,” Tobio snapped. “I had literally just met my soulmates, I wasn’t exactly thinking straight!”

“You never think straight,” Shouyou and Tadashi said together, and high-fived.

“Shut up,” said Tobio. But the words lacked even half the bite they usually held. 

“Someone’s happy,” Kei commented, squinting at Tobio over the tops of his glasses.

“Shut  _ up _ ,” said Tobio again. 

“Let him be happy,” Hitoka defended, brushing her hair out of her eyes. The wind was brisk, sending the edges of her long coat flying up. “He deserves it. He’s met the men he’s going to love for the rest of his life.”

She took his hand, smiling up at him. “I’m so glad for you.”

“Thanks, Hitoka,” Tobio murmured, giving her hand a squeeze. He glared at his other friends, spinning around to make sure all three of them were equal recipients of his displeased gaze. “At least  _ someone _ is.”

“I’m glad for you, Yamayama,” Shouyou protested. “You know that, right?”

Tobio did in fact know that, because Shouyou had explained so to him in excruciating detail over a three and a half hour long phone call last night, but he was fun to tease. “Hm,” Tobio said, affecting uncertainty. “No, I don’t.”

Shouyou screeched, darting forward to poke him in the chest. “Were you not listening to me last night?”

Tobio planted a hand on his face and shoved him away. Shouyou was stronger these days, likely a consequence of eating three square meals a day in his rich soulmate’s mansion instead of surviving off instant ramen like every other college student. “Your voice is so annoying, it’s hard to listen to!” 

Tadashi stepped in and seized Shouyou by the back of his jacket before they could really get into it. “Not here,” he said firmly. “Not on the street.” He glanced at Tobio, frowning. “And you, stop provoking him.”

“Alright,” Tobio relented. “I know you’re glad for me, Shou.” He made a point of looking at the others again. “Um. I know you all are.”

In fact, they were  _ so _ happy for him that Tobio was beginning to feel slightly stifled by all the fuss. It had been three days since the night that Tobio’s life had changed irrevocably, love blooming to saturated life on his chest, and it was all any of his friends were willing to talk about. Their meeting today was supposed to have been a group study session at their favorite cafe—but had devolved into gossip within five minutes, as Shouyou asked invasive personal questions while Kei covered his ears and protested that he didn’t want to hear the details. 

“Isn’t this your turn?” Hitoka asked, nudging Tobio slightly. Tobio glanced up and nodded when he caught sight of the street sign. It wasn’t his typical route: he was going over to Hajime and Tooru’s place for a few hours before heading back home. 

Shouyou cupped his hands around his mouth and cat-called, making Tobio hunch his shoulders up to his ears and glare. Tadashi fisted a hand in Shouyou’s hair and tugged gently, as a reprimand, but he was grinning as he told Tobio, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tobio grumbled, waving the four of them off as he took a right. When he glanced over his shoulder, they were all still standing at the intersection, staring at him with varying degrees of smug satisfaction.

Tobio turned back around and walked a little faster.

Tooru had given him the codes to the apartment building, so Tobio let himself into the lobby with ease, exchanging a nod with a woman leaving. This time, in the elevator, there were no feelings of panic or unease. There was only a bright and bubbling joy that had him shifting from foot to foot with anticipation. 

Hajime opened the door at his knock, greeting Tobio with a kiss. No matter how much they’d done this over the past three days, it felt like the first time every time—Hajime’s lips soft against his, igniting a sweet fire that dripped like honey down the back of his throat to pool somewhere low in his stomach. Tobio tried to press even closer, fingers pulling at Hajime’s lapel, and Hajime indulged him as best he could, letting Tobio burrow into him with small greedy noises. 

“Iwa-chan, no fair,” came a voice, and then there was another pair of hands wrapping around Tobio’s waist, another pair of lips kissing down the side of his neck with just a hint of teeth. Tobio rocked into the embrace, only pulling away when the back of his neck grew uncomfortably warm. 

“So,” Tobio coughed. “Um. What did you want to do tonight?” Last night, they’d watched one of Tooru’s alien movies that he was so obsessed with. Tobio had fallen asleep halfway through, only waking to find Hajime’s hand carding through his hair. It had felt so good that Tobio had continued to feign unconsciousness for the next forty minutes. 

Tooru and Hajime exchanged a glance. “Actually,” Hajime said slowly, “we were hoping we could talk to you for a minute.”

“That’s fine,” Tobio shrugged. He fairly skipped further into the apartment. Were they going to talk about plans for the future, maybe? Possible date nights? Tobio would be happy discussing his favorite ice cream flavor, if it was with them. 

Tooru and Hajime settled onto one end of their couch, leaving the other end open for Tobio. He curled into the cushion, drawing his knees up under his chin. “What is it?”

“Tobio,” Hajime began uncertainly, “there are, ah—what I mean to say is—”

“We want you to quit your job,” Tooru interrupted. “It’s dangerous, and we don’t like it.”

Tobio glanced between them, biting his lip. His earlier euphoria had worn away into something dull and a little uneasy. He didn’t think he liked the direction this conversation was heading. “But . . .” he said. “I thought I told you, after that shopping trip, Tooru. I need the job so I can pay my rent.”

His soulmates exchanged another unfathomable glance that left Tobio feeling as if a door had just been shut in his face. 

Hajime folded his hands together on his knee, leaning forward with an earnest expression. “What if you moved in here, and split the rent with us? Then you could get a different job, one that’s less . . . demanding.”

Tobio was already shaking his head. He kind of hated his dingy little apartment: it was far from campus, abominably cold in the winters, and sweltering in the summers, but it was  _ his _ . The first place he’d ever had to call his own. It was not his parents’ house, where every step taken had the possibility of triggering the unpredictable snare trap of his father’s anger. It was not his aunt’s lonely mausoleum, where he’d drifted down long hallways like an unsettled spirit searching for the barest scrap of warmth. 

It was his.

Besides, who moved in with people they’d only known for two months, soulmates or not? (Shouyou, as he often was, was the exception to the rule. Tobio, unlike Shouyou, could not muster that level of blind trust and uncomplicated faith in other people.)

Tooru’s brows drew together, a hint of a pout pulling at the corner of his mouth. It wasn’t anger that darkened his eyes, though—it was hurt. 

“It’s not you,” Tobio hastened to say, realizing how his immediate denial must’ve looked. “Um. I need my . . . space.”

What he could not say was that he was afraid. Afraid that if he gave up his independence and his freedom by moving in with Hajime and Tooru, there would come a point where he would sorely regret it. It was entirely possible that his soulmates would eventually grow tired of him—Tobio knew he wasn’t the easiest person to love—and then where would Tobio be, stuck in an apartment with two people who resented him? He would lose everything. 

“Okay,” Hajime said. “If moving in right now is too much for you, that’s okay. But we really think you should quit your job.”

“It’s dangerous,” Tooru said fiercely. “Somebody drugged you half out of your mind, Tobio-chan. For no better reason than that they could. Thank gods you made it to us, Tobio-chan. But what about next time? What if they use a stronger drug? What if they lock you in a room beforehand and make it so you can’t get away? They could  _ kill you _ , Tobio. And that would kill us.”

Tobio’s shoulders drew up around his ears. Tooru was acting like he was stupid—like he didn’t know all of that already. There was nothing about the risks of prostitution that Tooru could tell him that Tobio wasn’t already intimately familiar with. More familiar with than Tooru could ever dream.

“You don’t think I’ve already tried to get a different job?” Tobio snapped. “I didn’t—I didn’t want to have to sell my body just to survive. But it’s not like anybody else is hiring broke college students who can only work nights!”

“You must not have tried very hard,” Tooru said, his jaw jutting out stubbornly. “Surely it’s not the only option; surely you could’ve—”

“Don’t you dare,” Tobio shouted, suddenly furious. “Don’t you dare try and tell me what it’s like to be nineteen and have nothing—no home, no money, no family to support you—you have no fucking clue what it took—” 

Hajime’s brows drew together, pinching the space between his eyes into a deep furrow. “Whoa, Tobio, we’re just trying to help you.”

“I don’t need your—”

“No fucking clue about what?” Tooru snapped. “How about this: you have no fucking clue how it feels to watch you walk into that hotel, knowing you’re going to be letting other people touch you. Other people  _ fuck _ you. Did you ever stop to think how that makes us—your  _ soulmates _ —feel?” 

“It’s just a job!” Tobio cried, throwing his hands up. “Why does it matter if I’m sleeping with other people? You knew that about me before you knew I was your soulmate, and it didn’t bother you then. Obviously, I don’t lo—I don’t feel the same way about my clients that I feel about you two!”

“Can’t even say it, can you,” Tooru sneered, face twisted into a terrifying scowl. “It’s not that hard, Tobio-chan.  _ I love you _ . Go on, say it.”

“I—” Tobio’s chest heaved. He was abruptly nine years old again, watching his mother walk out the door. He was eleven, and his father had just hit him for the first time. He was fifteen, and Miwa was fighting the cops that had come to get her tooth and fucking nail; screaming at them to let her go,  _ begging _ them. 

The people who loved him—the people who he loved—always left him in the end.

“I can’t.” Tears slipped out of Tobio’s eyes, dripping onto the collar of his shirt. “I  _ can’t _ .”

Tooru stood, an abrupt and violent motion. Hajime reached out one hand to stop him; Tooru slapped it away. “Not now, Hajime.”

He stalked forward until he was standing over Tobio, but the comfort Tobio had been hoping for didn’t come. Instead, Tooru braced one hand on the back of the couch and the other on the seat, leaning into his space until they were centimeters apart.

“You want to know what I think?” Tooru breathed. “I think you  _ like _ it. Your job, I mean. That’s the real reason why you won’t quit. That’s why you can’t say  _ I love you _ , because you don’t mean it. I think you like it when strangers fuck you into the mattress and I think you like it when they leave marks on you for everyone to see and I think you like being a dirty fucking whore and I think that we’re just not enough for you, just can’t  _ satisfy _ you—”

“Tooru!” Hajime barked, and now he was on his feet too, hands clenched into fists and furious. 

It was too much. 

Hajime was angry, his hands were in fists—and fists were never a good sign, fists meant pain and bruises and applying makeup in the mirror at 3am—and Tooru was angry too—he thought Tobio—he thought Tobio was— 

A dirty fucking whore. 

It was an accusation that had been leveled at Tobio before, by clients who hadn’t been satisfied, by clients who wanted more from him than he was willing to give. He’d never expected it to come from the mouth of his soulmate, who was supposed to love him. Support him. Cherish him.

In that moment, something new and delicate in Tobio’s chest withered and died. 

He should have known better than to trust in soulmates, after the fucking mess that his parents’ relationship had turned out to be. He’d been right to be wary, right not to want to move in and quit his job, right to protect himself against the eventuality of his soulmates resenting him. After all, they obviously already did.

Tooru thought he was a a dirty fucking whore. And Hajime would choose him, if it was between him and Tobio; how could he not? Childhood best friends and high school sweethearts, they were everything Tobio had never even gotten a chance to be. 

“Tooru, you can’t say that!” Hajime growled. “How could you, you—”

“And why not?” Tooru spun away from Tobio. “It’s the truth, isn’t it?” He flung his arms wide, and one of them whistled by Tobio’s ear.

Tobio flinched. The panic that he’d been holding at bay suddenly swamped him, carrying him away on a tide of fear and sick despair. He needed to get out. He needed to get away, before he got hurt. 

Tobio scrambled out of his seat and lunged for the front door—barely registering the shouts behind him—and wrenched the knob to the side, falling into the hallway. He took the steps down to the lobby three at a time, blinded by tears and recklessness. He didn’t care if he fell. He didn’t care if he cracked his head open on the concrete. He didn’t care. 

His headlong rush carried him out of the lobby and through the apartment’s front door into the night. The rain hit him like a punch to the gut, and he staggered. The wind had picked up even further, driving stinging droplets into Tobio’s eyes. Cursing, Tobio flung one hand up over his face, picked a direction at random, and ran. He didn’t give much of a damn for where he ended up, as long as it was somewhere far, far away from his soulmates. 

He ran until his lungs burned, until his legs ached, until the rain had left him soaked through and shivering. He bent over and braced his hands on his knees, panting. It was late, now—he’d need to find a place to spend the night soon. A cheap motel, or a drier corner of an alleyway. No point in trying to get home when he had no idea where the fuck he was, anyway. 

Or—he glanced up at his surroundings and started to laugh, a bitter, cold thing that boiled out of him like thick poison.

He did know where he was, actually. Of course. Of course he would end up here. It felt like a sign. Tobio had just, in all probability, ruined one of the most important relationships in his life. Why not finish the job and wreck another one?

Tobio pushed his way into the Women’s Prison.

The guard stared at him, but let him in anyway. Tobio slogged down the long hallway, overly conscious of the dripping trail he was leaving behind. What a perfect ending to this horrific night it would be if someone slipped and died because of him. 

Settling into the chair on one side of the glass, Tobio crossed his arms on the small desk in front of him and hung his head. He felt sick, in every sense of the word. 

A tapping on the glass caught his attention, and Tobio picked up the phone mechanically. 

“Tobio,” Miwa breathed. “Oh gods, Tobio.” Her eyes scanned him, flickering from his soaked clothing to his slumped shoulders to his pale and drawn face. Tobio didn’t want to know what she saw in him at that moment. Something twisted and dark, no doubt—something that destroyed every bright thing it had the chance to touch. 

“What happened?” She sounded agonized. She wouldn’t be, soon. She’d think this was what he deserved. She’d be furious. 

“I lied,” said Tobio. 

She shook her head slowly. “Tobio, I don’t understand. What are you saying?”

Tobio barked out a harsh laugh. “I’m saying I lied, Miwa. What’s so hard to understand about that?”

Her mouth pinched. “Tobio—”

“I don’t work at a restaurant. I tried. I really tried. I went to seven different ones, did you know? But none of them would hire me. I was too young, or I didn’t have any references, or I lacked reliable transportation, or I couldn’t work the morning shift—it was the same bullshit every time. They didn’t want me.”

His breath shuddered in his chest, knuckles whitening around the phone. This. This was the moment. 

“But you know who did want me? I suppose—you could call him a pimp. He said that I had good bone structure. That I was such a  _ pretty _ boy. Then he told me I could keep fifty percent of what I made, if I was even half as good on my knees as I looked like I would be. And I am, you know? Very good on my knees.”

He dared a look up at her, saw the way her eyes had gone wide and shocked. 

“I let strangers fuck me for money, Miwa. Your baby brother. I took the chance you gave me—the chance you gave five fucking years of your life for—and I became—this. The kinder terms are ‘prostitute.’ ‘Paid companion.’ ‘Sex worker,’ even. I didn’t think I was ashamed of myself, of what I had to do to survive. But today—”

She was standing now; Tobio, numbly staring straight ahead, could no longer see her face.

“Today, someone I—someone I love called me a dirty fucking whore. And you know what? I’m beginning to think he was right. That’s exactly why I never told you, isn’t it? That’s why I lied. Because I was ashamed—because I knew, deep down, that you’d see me for what I truly am. A—a—”

He choked. He couldn't, he wouldn’t, say those words again.

“I know you must be disgusted with me now. I know I’ve disappointed you. And I’m sorry, Miwa, I’m so  _ sorry. _ ” 

Standing, he wiped a hand clumsily across his face, trying to stem the seemingly unending stream of tears. “I’m sorry.”

He put the phone down.

Behind the glass, Miwa seemed to finally have overcome her shock. Her mouth was moving soundlessly—condemnations, no doubt. If Tobio was a stronger man, he’d have the courage to face her, to listen to what she had to say even if it tore him apart to hear it. 

But he was not a stronger man. Tobio turned his back on his sister—who by now had escalated to banging on the glass with a fist—and walked away. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um. I'm . . . sorry? 
> 
> (Side note: sex workers are human beings who deserve respect, and normally I'm careful to have Tobio reflect those views, but he's just going through a bit of a rough patch right now :/ Also, my intention wasn't to villainize Tooru--he didn't express himself in an appropriate manner, but his words came from a place of hurt.)
> 
> Anyway, Merry Christmas to those of you who are celebrating today and Happy Kwanzaa to those of you who are celebrating tomorrow!


	10. Ten

“Shouyou, you’re spoiling me.”

Shouyou grinned down at his soulmate, running his fingers gently through Kenma’s two-toned hair. He was sitting propped up against the headboard of Kenma’s massive bed, with the other man’s head pillowed on his lap. “No such thing,” he chirped, leaning down to plant a kiss on Kenma’s forehead. 

“Shouyou, stop it,” Kenma complained, squirming and trying to angle his Switch for a better view of the screen. But Shouyou could see the faint blush that had bloomed across Kenma’s cheekbones, the small and contented smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth. 

“I love you,” Shouyou said, placing another kiss on the soft hollow of Kenma’s neck. “I love you here, and here, and here—”

The phone rang and Shouyou groaned, reaching across to the nightstand to grab it. Oddly enough, it was Kei calling him. Kei  _ never _ called—he’d once referred to phone conversations as “a torment that should be reserved for the vilest sinners on earth.” 

Well, whatever. Shouyou only knew what approximately half those words meant, anyway. He tucked the phone between his ear and his shoulder, absently rubbing circles into Kenma’s temples. “Hello?”

“Tell the other half of your brain cell to get here now,” Kei gritted into the receiver. “He’s forty minutes late for his shift, and the boss is  _ furious _ —”

Muffled but still audible, Shouyou could hear a man’s voice raised in a shout, his tone demanding. Shouyou winced, remembering his own days of facing that explosive temper.

“—talking about firing him. Tadashi’s out there covering for him, but I have no idea how much longer he’ll be able to stall—”

“Wait,” said Shouyou. “Tobio’s not at work?”

A pause that somehow managed to imply that Shouyou was an idiot. “No,” Kei said. And then: “He’s not with you?”

“No,” Shouyou said. “Uh. Why would he be?”

“Because he’s not here,” Kei said. “And he’s not at his apartment. Hitoka already checked.”

Shouyou stirred uneasily, folding one knee up to his chest and resting his chin on it. “But . . . those are like . . . the only places he goes.”

“I’m well aware, Shouyou.”

“Maybe he’s with his soulmates?”

“No. In fact, Oikawa-san called Tadashi a couple hours ago asking if  _ we’d _ seen him. He sounded . . . upset.” 

Shouyou’s hands stilled in Kenma’s hair. His sense of unease bloomed into full-blown alarm. “So nobody knows where he is. Kei, I don’t like this.”

“No,” Kei said quietly. “Neither do I.”

Shouyou bit his lip. “I’ll call him. If he doesn’t pick up . . .”

“Then we find him.”

Shouyou ended the call, thumb hovering over Tobio’s contact. He put the phone to his ear, stomach dropping lower with every second the dial tone dragged on. When he only got Tobio’s voicemail—a grunted-out “leave a message” in that surly tone of his—he slammed the phone down onto the bed. He was not Tobio’s soulmate; could not claim that mystical connection that would’ve bound their hearts and minds. 

But Shouyou did not need to be Tobio’s soulmate to know that something was wrong. Tobio was his dearest friend, and he felt it in his bones. 

Kenma sat up from between his legs and twisted around, setting his game down on the bed next to Shouyou’s phone. A small frown marred the firm lines of his mouth; Shouyou reached out and tried to smooth it away with his fingertips.

“What’s wrong, Sho?” 

“Tobio’s missing,” Shouyou admitted, fighting the wobble in his lip. Sure, he fought with the other man all the time, and had even threatened to kill him with his own two hands on more than one occasion, but that didn’t mean he  _ actually _ wanted Tobio to get kidnapped or something. (Though he was at a bit of a loss to think of who would try and kidnap Tobio—the man was 192 centimeters of crabbiness and pure dumbassery.)

“Okay,” said Kenma, and began to slide off the bed, shrugging a hoodie on over his t-shirt as he went.

“Wait, where are you going?”

“With you,” Kenma said simply. “You’re going to go look for him, right?” He glanced back over his shoulder, shuffling his feet into a pair of shoes. 

“Yeah, of course,” said Shouyou. “I was going to meet the others at the hotel. But you don’t have to—”

“He’s important to you,” Kenma said, with a half-smile. “And you’re important to me. I know how I’d feel, if it was Kuroo.” 

Kuroo was Kenma’s childhood best friend, his closest companion, and the only person besides Shouyou that Kenma trusted with a key to his house. Kuroo looked out for Kenma as much as Kenma let him, a little bit like Shouyou tried to look out for Tobio without Tobio ever being the wiser. This mostly boiled down to Shouyou keeping people’s attention off Tobio in social situations, especially when Tobio accidentally insulted someone because the word ‘tact’ wasn’t in his vocabulary.

Which—oh  _ no _ . 

Shouyou could see it perfectly: Tobio had probably pissed off some yakuza boss by bumping into him on the street, and instead of apologizing like a normal person, had demanded to know why the yakuza boss was in  _ his _ way, and then the yakuza boss had gotten mad and told his yakuza thugs to grab Tobio, and now Tobio was a prisoner in some underground basement being tortured, and Shouyou would  _ never see him again _ .

“Shouyou.” Kenma crossed back to Shouyou’s side, taking him by the hand. The terrible images in Shouyou’s head dissipated under the pressure of Kenma’s fingers in his. “I’m sure he’s fine. Come on.”

Shouyou allowed Kenma to lead him by the hand, out of the room and out of the house and into the car worth more than a semester of his tuition. 

Kenma was probably right—in fact, he was rarely wrong. It was one of the things that Shouyou loved about him: the razor-keen intelligence that he used to methodically dismantle his problems like an architect taking apart a building brick by brick.

Yes, Kenma was probably right. Tobio was  _ fine _ . 

But Shouyou had never been a liar, and the assurance rang false even inside his own head.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“So, what now?”

Shouyou twisted around in the front seat of Kenma’s car, glaring anxiously at Kei. Sitting in the back and therefore sandwiched uncomfortably between Hitoka and Tadashi, Kei glared right back. 

“I thought  _ you _ had a plan,” Shouyou protested. “You were the one who was all like ‘ _ then we find him _ ’ on the phone earlier!”

“I had a plan to get the three of us out of work, dipshit,” Kei hissed. “Now it’s your turn to come up with something.”

Kei’s plan had been for the three of them to fake sickness, claiming they’d all eaten from the same bad batch of fish earlier. The boss had not believed them until Tadashi had apparently doubled over and vomited right onto his shoes—and then he couldn’t get them out the door fast enough. 

Tadashi was still a little smug about vomiting on command. 

“I can’t just  _ come up with something _ !” Shouyou shrilled. “I—”

“Shouyou,” Kenma murmured, reaching out with his free hand and laying it on his thigh. “Where does Tobio like to go?”

“That’s the thing,” Tadashi said, slumping forward until his head rested against the back of Shouyou’s seat. “He doesn’t really like to go anywhere. And we’ve already checked all the obvious places.”

“Except one,” Hitoka said, and they all went quiet. 

“Do you really think—” said Tadashi.

“Yes,” said Shouyou. “I think we  _ have _ to go. You know she’s the first person he goes to when something happens.”

“Fuck,” Kei said, which just about summed it up. It wasn’t that Shouyou thought he would dislike Miwa—quite the opposite, really. Anybody who loved Tobio so openly and uncomplicatedly, Shouyou was apt to like on principle. But Tobio kept them apart on purpose, because it killed him to lie to his sister and he wasn’t willing to ask the rest of them to lie for him, too. 

At this point, though, Shouyou didn’t see that they had any other choice.

“Where?” Kenma asked, putting his hands on the wheel. 

“The Women’s Prison,” Shouyou said. Kenma looked at him but didn’t push, and Shouyou fell in love with him a little more for it. 

The ride over was silent. Shouyou twisted his hands in his lap, and hoped. 

At the prison, they had a small but involved debate, agreeing that only one person should go in but disagreeing on who that one should be. Kei argued that he was the best liar and should serve as the delegate in case they had to talk to Miwa because Tobio wasn’t there, Tadashi claimed that he was the best at easing Tobio out of one of his tailspins, and Hitoka said that she was the most empathetic and none of the rest of them could be trusted to be sensitive enough.

Shouyou didn’t say anything. He simply got out of the car and signaled to Kenma to lock it behind him. 

Inside the prison, Shouyou was taken off guard by how grey it was. The way Tobio talked about this place, Shouyou expected it to be brimming with color and light—though maybe that had just been Tobio’s impression of Miwa bleeding through. 

The guard looked at him a little askance when he explained who he was there to see, but let him through with no resistance. Shouyou felt his heart bottom out somewhere near the soles of his feet, his earlier panic returning full force. Tobio wasn’t here; the guard would’ve told him if Miwa had another visitor. 

But he pushed through the gate anyway with a tight little smile. If Tobio wasn’t here, maybe Miwa would know where he’d gone. 

When Miwa sat down across the glass from him, Shouyou actually had to catch his breath for a moment. Miwa was what Shouyou imagined Tobio would look like in five years, if he were a woman, and if he carried the same terrible burden she so clearly did. Shouyou could see the ghost of Tobio’s features in hers—they had the same proud nose, the same cutting jawline, the same piercing blue eyes that glittered like ice over a cold sea. 

“You must be one of Tobio’s little friends,” Miwa said, and cleared her throat roughly. There were spots of color high on her cheeks. “The redhead with a lot of energy. From the . . . I don’t know what to call it. Forgive me if this is rude. The brothel.”

“And you’re Miwa-kun. Tobio talks about you a lot. I’m Hinata Shouyou, pleased to meet you,” Shouyou said. “Have you seen—” he stumbled over his words, tongue turning to ash in his mouth as he realized what he’d just done. 

Fuck.  _ Fuck _ . Maybe he should’ve let Kei come in instead.

“I MEAN, I’VE NEVER EVEN LOOKED AT A BROTHEL,” he blurted out. “What’s a brothel? I have no idea what you’re talking about! I work at a—a restaurant, with your brother, who also works at a restaurant. With me!”

Shouyou winced. If they found Tobio after all, Shouyou would barely get to enjoy the reunion—he’d be too busy running for his life from the very man he was trying to save. 

She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I appreciate that you’d try and lie for him, Hinata-kun. But it’s too late. My brother’s already come and told me the truth himself.”

A terrible, creeping dread turned the nausea in Shouyou’s stomach to leaden ice. Tobio had once sworn to him that he’d die before telling Miwa the truth, which meant—which meant—

“Tobio,” Shouyou whispered. “Oh, Tobio, what have you done?” He lifted desperate eyes to Miwa’s. “He was here? When?”

“Last night,” she said. “He came in, he was . . . distraught. I don’t know how else to put it. He was erratic, not making sense. Then he said that he’d lied. That he didn’t work at a restaurant after all. That I must be disappointed in him . . . he said such—terrible things about himself.”

Shouyou bit his lip. “Are you mad? It’s not that he didn’t trust you, I promise. He was just so afraid you’d be mad.”

“ _ Of course I’m fucking mad _ ,” she shouted, standing abruptly. Her hand shook around the telephone, gripping it so tightly feedback wailed down the line and into Shouyou’s ear.

Shouyou flinched back, fighting a disorienting wash of deja vu. For a moment it was Tobio’s furious face across from him, Tobio’s explosive temper on the other side of that glass wall.

“I’m not mad about what he chooses to do with his body, that’s his goddamn business,” she snarled. “I’m mad that he  _ lied _ . I’m mad . . . I’m mad that he thought I could—that I could—that I could ever be disappointed in him. That I could ever be  _ disgusted _ with him.”

Her voice broke and she dropped bonelessly back into her seat, free hand clutching at her hair. She turned her face away. 

Very quietly, Shouyou said, “I know it must be killing you to be stuck in here.” 

Because that was what was truly upsetting her, Shouyou could tell—not just that Tobio had lied, or that he’d assumed the worst of her, but that he’d left her. To Miwa, Tobio was forever the little boy that needed saving. And now, he’d gone somewhere beyond her reach, and it was eating at her the way rust ate at steel, weakening it from the inside out.

“He’s gone,” she whispered, without looking up. “Isn’t he. It’s what he does when everything gets too much. He always fucking runs.”

“I’ll find him,” Shouyou promised, edging forward in his seat. “Me and Hitoka and Tadashi and Kei, we’ll find him. Even if we have to turn the city upside down.”

“Don’t bother,” she said, shaking her hair back. “I know exactly where he’s gone.”

Shouyou took the address down with a swelling heart, new hope making his hands shake. He rose to go, stopped by her fingers splayed against the glass. 

“Wait,” she said. “He said something else last night, too. It was the impetus for this whole episode, I think. What made him upset enough to come in here and tell me the truth in the first place.” 

Shouyou waited. She seemed to be choosing her words very carefully.

“When you find the person,” she said slowly and with terrible deliberation. “That called my baby brother a ‘dirty fucking whore’—”

Her eyes were burning, blue like the heart of a flame. Shouyou hadn’t believed, at first, that she could’ve committed the crime Tobio had said she’d been imprisoned for. 

He believed it now. 

“—when you find them, you tell them. My name is Kageyama Miwa, and I’m gonna make their life a living hell.”

Shouyou shivered. A great many things made sense now—Tobio’s disappearing act; Miwa’s deep-seated rage that went beyond her anger at Tobio. Even Oikawa-san’s panicked phone call to Tadashi, asking where Tobio was. 

After all, had it not been Oikawa-san and Iwaizumi-san whom Tobio had gone to see last night? Was their apartment not within walking distance to the prison? Was it not Oikawa-san who’d been so obviously jealous of Tobio’s clients, every time he’d shown up at the hotel to take Tobio dancing?

Shouyou bowed. “I’ll tell them,” he promised. 

He was going to tell them a great many other things, too, if he had his way—and he almost always did.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The rain had started up again by the time Kenma pulled to a stop in front of the address Miwa had given Shouyou. It was an old, decrepit townhouse, lights long gone out. The gray siding sagged, mold-spotted and faded with age, and the porch hadn’t fared much better, slumping into the wet ground with crumbling steps. 

“Here?” said Kei, squinting out the car window with no small measure of disgust. “Why would he come here?”

“I don’t see him,” Hitoka said anxiously, twisting around in her seat. “I suppose he’s inside?”

Shouyou fervently hoped so. Tobio had been missing for almost a full day at this point, and Shouyou hated to think he’d been outside and exposed to the elements for all those long hours. But at the same time—there was a dreadful aura to the townhouse that even Kenma seemed to be picking up on, if his hunched shoulders were any indication. Something terrible had happened in that house, Shouyou was sure of it. Something unspeakable. 

He opened his mouth to comment, but was interrupted by Tadashi abruptly opening his door and darting out into the street. An oncoming car swerved around him, causing Kei to shout and scrabble at his still-buckled seatbelt with both hands. 

The car passed with a loud honk, revealing Tadashi throwing himself onto his knees on the townhouse’s lawn, reaching towards the dying tree in the center of the yard. 

Shouyou saw what he had not before—a huddled form resting against the tree trunk, that, if he squinted, resolved itself into a young man with dark hair and eyes like the sea in storm. 

“Oh, fuck,” said Shouyou, and ran after Tadashi. 

“You need to stand up,” Tadashi was urging Tobio when Shouyou skidded to a stop on the grass in a spray of rainwater. “Come on, Tobio.” He tugged on Tobio’s arm, darting a panicked glance up at Shouyou when the other man didn’t so much as stir. 

Shouyou had seen Tobio through some pretty rough spots. Their shared first night at the hotel, when Tobio had come out of his client’s room with such chilling emptiness in his eyes. The three-year anniversary of his sister’s imprisonment, when Tobio had stormed around his apartment, shattering dish after dish against his kitchen floor. 

But never—never—had Shouyou seen Tobio look like this. 

Shouyou crouched next to his friend, reaching for his face with gentle fingers. His skin was waxy and cold to the touch, periodically wracked by shivers. More worrying, however, than his cracked lips or bloodshot eyes, was his utter limpness. 

Tobio fought. He spat and he struggled and he struck out at anything that dared hurt him ten times harder than the initial blow. It was a cornerstone of his personality, the bedrock of immutable defiance that all his stubborn pride was built upon. Tobio had suffered—gods, had he suffered—but it never seemed to keep him down for long. Shouyou had seen him recover from blows that would’ve crushed other people into dust. Normally, he would’ve been jerking his chin out of Shouyou’s hands, brushing away the jacket Hitoka was laying over his shoulders, insisting that he was fine.

But, instead, he was just . . . letting it all happen without a word of protest. 

“Tobio,” Tadashi said again, “please. You have to  _ stand up _ .” There was a desperate undercurrent to his words—he was begging Tobio to struggle against whatever despair had him gripped so tightly, pleading with him to resist the bleak anguish that was reflected in his pallid, drawn features. 

“Tobio, you stupid bastard,” Kei snarled, kicking at his leg. “Stop being a shit and get the fuck up.”

Normally, those words would’ve had Tobio jumping for Kei’s throat. They hit Tobio and slid off like so much rainwater instead. And that—that scared Kei. Shouyou saw his own fear in Kei’s clenched fists, white-knuckled with tension. 

“It’s time to go,” Hitoka tried. “Aren’t you cold? We can go home—you can come over to our place, I’ll make you tea the way you like it . . .”

Nothing. It was like Tobio had gone somewhere so deep inside himself he couldn’t even hear them around him. 

They could simply make him go. That was an option. Kei was strong enough to heave Tobio over his shoulder and drag him to the car.

But it wasn’t a battle for Tobio’s body that was being fought here, and they all knew it. It was one for his mind. If he didn’t fight—if he didn’t get up—Shouyou was afraid he never would again.

Shouyou tightened his grip on Tobio’s face, digging his fingers into his jaw. “Listen to me,” he said fiercely. “Godammit, you listen to me, asshole. I know what Oikawa said to you—”

It was Oikawa’s name that finally got a reaction from Tobio, a small breath puffing past his parted lips. 

“—but it wasn’t  _ true _ . He doesn’t know you, Tobio. Not like I do. What he called you—that couldn’t be further from the truth. You’re brave. You’re smart. Well . . . uh, sorta. You’re kind. You work every day to be a better version of yourself and he will never know the strength that takes. So get up. Get up. And if you can’t trust yourself to know that you’re a good person—that you don’t deserve what he said to you—then trust me instead. I’m here.”

Slowly, Tobio’s eyes focused on Shouyou’s face, awareness bleeding back into his features. 

“Shouyou?” he croaked. Shouyou let out a relieved breath.

“Yeah?” said Shouyou, and released Tobio’s jaw to tug on his arm. “ _ Gods _ , you’re heavy.” 

Tobio stood. He swayed, but he was standing, and Shouyou knew he wasn’t imagining Kei’s exhaled breath or the naked relief on Hitoka’s face.

“Shouyou?” Tobio said again, thinly. 

“Yeah?”

“Pineapple,” said Tobio, and burst into tears.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow this is the longest chapter so far? Anyway, I know Kagehina aren't soulmates-soulmates in this fic but I firmly believe they're extremely important to each other whatever universe they're in. Also, the pineapple thing at the end was a reference to an earlier chapter where Tobio was describing a system of code words the first years set up to deal with emergencies. Pineapple means "code red, all hands on deck because somebody is either actively dying or in severe distress."


	11. Eleven

“And why not?” Tooru spun away from Tobio, a dark rage clawing up his throat and coating his tongue with bitter poison. “It’s the truth, isn’t it?” He flung his arms wide, daring Hajime to defy him. 

The truth, of course, was that Tobio didn’t love them the way they loved Tobio; that Tobio was perfectly content whoring himself out to every paying customer in the city. It was not an unreasonable expectation, to ask Tobio to quit his job—especially not when it was  _ endangering him _ . 

No, not unreasonable at all, but neither of his soulmates were  _ listening _ to him. 

There was a loud thump from behind Tooru, and he whipped around just in time to watch Tobio’s retreating back as he half-fell out of his seat at the couch and scrabbled for the door. 

“Don’t you  _ dare _ ,” Tooru snarled, taking a step after him. “We are not finished with this conversation, Tobio-chan!”

The door slammed shut, heedless of Tooru’s words. Tooru threw his hands up with a wordless yell, kicking off his house slippers and looking around furiously for his sneakers. They were going to talk about this, even if Tooru had to hunt Tobio down and shout at him in the middle of the street.

How did Tobio possibly think it was fair that he be the one to leave like  _ he’d _ been hurt, after he’d gone and said such things to Tooru and Hajime? No, Tobio did  _ not _ want to move in with them, no he would  _ not _ quit his job, and no, he could  _ not _ even get the words ‘I love you’ past his lips without looking like he was choking on them. 

Tooru had thought they were all on the same page with regards to their relationship—that they were ready to move forward as three, committed to each other as soulmates. 

Evidently not. 

Tobio was too attached to that goddamn hotel, for some reason Tooru couldn’t even fathom, happy to let other people have their way with him. It made Tooru see red, thinking of Tobio in another person’s bed, another person’s hands on the hard planes and soft curves of Tobio’s body. And now Tobio had gone and left, and Tooru hated being left. It made him feel like Tobio didn’t even think Tooru was worth his time.

He stomped toward the door, growling under his breath. He’d  _ make _ Tobio see Tooru was worth his time. 

His progress was abruptly arrested by Hajime’s hand around his wrist, and Tooru turned around with a sneer. “Oh come on, Hajime. Don’t tell me you’re not angry, too.”

“Of course I’m angry,” Hajime said, green eyes boring into Tooru’s. “But not at him.”

He was calm. Too calm. There were degrees to Hajime’s anger: light irritation begot a scowl and a swat, frustration earned a raised voice and a rude gesture, authentic anger triggered clipped sentences and a pursed mouth.

The chilled serenity that Hajime was currently displaying spoke of true, genuine fury. 

“Hajime,” Tooru said, a little uncertain now. He pulled his arm out of Hajime’s grip, leaving the skin of his wrist feeling cold. “He can’t just—leave like that when we start arguing. We have to have the uncomfortable conversations if we want this to work, no matter how angry or upset he gets.”

The skin under Hajime’s eyes tightened. “He wasn’t angry, Tooru. He was terrified. You scared the living shit out of him.”

Tooru’s mouth hung open, his next argument caught behind his teeth. It was as if a bucket of ice water had been dumped over his head, dousing the flames of his anger. Surely . . . surely not. Tooru would have noticed if he was scaring Tobio. Wouldn’t he have? 

He shook his head, rejecting the notion. No. There was no reason for Tobio to be scared of him. Tooru would never have—hit him, or anything like that. 

“For someone so smart,” Hajime said softly. “You can be so  _ fucking _ stupid.”

Tooru bristled. That felt like adding insult to injury. It was bad enough that one of his soulmates had stormed out the door on him, the absolute last thing he needed was the other one calling him stupid. 

“He—” Tooru began, indignation swelling in his chest. 

“You.” Hajime cut across him with brutal finality, clutching at his hair with both hands. “This was you, Tooru. You always do this. Someone hurts you—not even on purpose—and you . . . you get so cruel. It’s like there’s something in you that  _ enjoys _ making other people feel like shit. You’ve always been good at reading people, Tooru. Which just means you know exactly how to twist the knife.”

“That’s not what I did,” Tooru whispered. “I didn’t.”

“Tooru.” Hajime’s mouth pinched bitterly. “You called him a—a—”

— _ dirty fucking whore I think you like it when strangers fuck you into the mattress we’re just not enough for you _ —

And perhaps the words had been a little harsh, but . . . 

“If he doesn’t want to be called a whore, maybe he shouldn’t act like one,” Tooru snapped, his every nerve lit up with the rage of imagining Tobio’s head thrown back in ecstasy against someone else’s pillow. That hadn’t been twisting the knife, it was just that Tooru was hurt, and he was jealous, and he wanted Tobio to  _ understand _ . 

He wanted Tobio to hurt like he was hurting.

It had been the wrong thing to say. Hajime shook his head and took a step back—actually retreated from Tooru, as if Tooru were his enemy across some invisible battle line.

“Wait,” Tooru said, his voice pitching higher. “Wait, Iwa-chan, where are you going? Are you leaving?”

“No,” Hajime said coolly. “I’m going to bed.” 

He wheeled around and pointed one damning finger at Tooru. “But you’re sleeping on the couch until you get your  _ fucking _ head on straight and realize how shitty you’re being.”

Tooru waited until Hajime had shut himself in the bedroom before he flung himself onto the couch with a snarl, listening to the sounds of his soulmate banging around in the bathroom. There was no goodnight kiss, not even a blanket brought out for him, which was how he knew Hajime was well and truly pissed. 

But that just made Tooru angrier. 

Hajime had  _ promised _ him that Tobio would not come between them. He had spun grand vows about how much Tooru meant to him, about how he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Tooru regardless of anything, or anyone, else. 

And now here they were, two and a half days into accepting Tobio into their bond, sleeping in separate rooms because Hajime thought Tooru was being  _ mean _ to Tobio. 

Tooru scoffed, stuffing his head under one of the decorative pillows his mother had insisted they keep for appearances’ sake. If Tooru had been mean, it was because Tobio had been mean first. Besides, Tobio was a grown man and perfectly capable of standing up for himself. He didn’t need Hajime to play white knight for him. 

Hajime’s footsteps emerged from the bedroom and crossed to the living room; Tooru held his breath, hoping for a blanket, a gentle touch, maybe even an apology. 

None came. The lights flicked off, plunging Tooru into darkness, and he listened bitterly as Hajime retreated back into the bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

Well. 

In the morning, perhaps Hajime would come to his senses and realize that it was Tobio who’d ignited the argument in the first place, not Tooru. Maybe he’d apologize, and they’d go and confront Tobio—together, like they should be.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the morning, it took Tooru approximately thirty minutes to acquire 1) a crick in the neck and 2) the leaden, undeniable knowledge that he’d been wrong. 

The slow and creeping realization kept him pinned to the couch like a rare butterfly on some eccentric collector’s wall, afraid to move lest the shards of guilt and pain drive themselves any deeper into his skin. Last night’s rage had dissipated, exposing a deep and abiding layer of shame that made him want to curl up and never show his face to the world again.

Yes, he’d been angry and jealous and hurt, but it had in no way justified the things that Tooru had said to Tobio. Those awful, nasty, downright cruel words, which Tooru had wielded like knives against his own soulmate.

Gods. Tobio was practically still a kid—and he’d been right, Tooru  _ didn’t _ have a clue what it was like to be nineteen and have no money and no family. He’d been lucky enough to have parents who accepted him for who he was, and a steady allowance that enabled him to live in comfort. 

Tooru had no right to criticize how Tobio survived, and he especially had no right to demand that Tobio quit the job that kept him afloat. He’d known of Tobio’s profession for weeks before he and Hajime had discovered that Tobio was their soulmate, and it hadn’t bothered him then. The only reason it was bothering him now was due to his own stupid jealousy. 

And then Tooru had gone and let that jealousy control him. He’d called Tobio a whore, twice. He’d implied that Tobio was some sort of insatiable pervert. He’d all but labeled him a slut.

No wonder Tobio had run out on him. In his position, Tooru would’ve too, and damned himself to hell while he was at it.

The memory of Tobio’s departing back flashed through his mind again, igniting a fresh wave of shame. It  _ had _ been fear in Tobio’s expression; pure terror that had pushed him into jumping to his feet and lunging for the door. 

Tooru had done something that made Tobio think Tooru was actually going to hurt him, strike him, and that—on top of everything else—was unforgivable. He’d behaved like scum last night, lower than low, not fit to exist in the same room as Tobio, much less be his soulmate. It would be nothing less than what Tooru deserved if Tobio decided to cut him out of his life entirely.

The bedroom door opened, and Tooru cringed into himself, remembering. It hadn’t just been Tobio that he’d wounded last night.

Hajime padded quietly into the kitchen, considerate of Tooru even while furious with him. It made Tooru bite his lip against a sob. Most of the time, he was secure in his belief that he and Hajime were worthy of each other. Then, Tooru fucked up—and Hajime was right about that, this was not the first time that Tooru had torn some poor undeserving soul to shreds simply because he felt like it—and he was reminded that Hajime was far, far more than a petty wretch like Tooru deserved. 

If Tooru were a better person, he’d let Hajime go, soulmates or not. He’d let Hajime find someone else better suited for him, someone kinder and brighter and  _ easier _ . Like Tobio.

But Tooru was not quite  _ that _ good of a person. He was selfish in the matters of the heart, both hating and fearing the thought of Hajime ever leaving him.

It was that fear, along with the razor-edged awareness of just how colossal his offense last night had been, that propelled Tooru to his feet. He shuffled into the kitchen but paused before approaching Hajime, unsure of his welcome. 

Hajime’s shoulders tensed as he washed his mug out in the sink, which meant he knew Tooru was there behind him. He didn’t turn around, which meant he was still angry. But he also didn’t start yelling again, which meant that he was open to Tooru’s pleas for his forgiveness.

Tooru edged forward, pausing when his contritely ducked head met the space between Hajime’s shoulder blades. He reached out, curling both hands into the hem of Hajime’s shirt. 

“I’m sorry,” Tooru said into Hajime’s back. 

“For?” Hajime said dispassionately, laying his mug out to dry. He leaned forward to brace his hands against the sink, taking Tooru with him.

“For being cruel,” Tooru breathed. “For . . . twisting the knife.” His already-thin voice broke into a sob and he closed his eyes tight, fighting for composure. “I was an ass.”

“Yes.”

“I was an unrepentant bastard and an incomparable shithead.”

“Yes.”

It hurt, for Hajime to so coldly confirm some of the worst things Tooru thought about himself—but it was almost a good hurt, like a clean break. Gods knew, Tooru wouldn’t have made it this far in life without Hajime to call him on his bullshit.

He shuddered, crowding closer to Hajime until he was nearly standing between his legs. It was a good sign that Hajime let him. 

“I’m  _ sorry _ , Iwa-chan.”

Hajime sighed and turned around, taking Tooru’s face between his still-wet hands. Any other day, Tooru would’ve ducked out of his grasp with an offended screech. Today, he turned his cheek into Hajime’s palm; quietly, fiercely desperate. He would’ve taken Hajime’s hands covered in mud. He would’ve taken them bloody. He would’ve, quite happily, killed a man to keep his place in Hajime’s arms. 

“You idiot,” said Hajime softly, and Tooru knew he was forgiven. He almost cried out at the relief of it.

“Why do you  _ do _ this to yourself?” And, oh, the exhausted perplexity in Hajime’s tone was so much worse than all his icy rage.

“I don’t know,” Tooru sniffled. “I just get so . . . so angry. I think there’s something wrong with me, Hajime. Something terrible.”

Hajime’s hands slipped around the back of Tooru’s neck and down his spine over his soulmarks, pulling him imperceptibly closer. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Tooru. You’re just . . . you.”

_ Just you _ , he said, and Tooru regardless heard the rest that remained only silent implication, the rest that Hajime was too kind to ever put into words: _ just you _ , callous and pitiless and possessive.

“I’m sorry,” Tooru said for a third time, miserable and meaning it more than perhaps he’d ever meant it before in his life.

Hajime let out a long sigh, thumbs rubbing circles into the divots of Tooru’s hips. “I know. I know, Tooru. But I’m not really the one you should be apologizing to.”

The sound that Tobio had made as he left—a choked-off cry, so much pain and anguish in such a small noise—rang again in Tooru’s ears, loud as a death-knell.

“If he ever talks to me again,” Tooru muttered bitterly. “Wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t. I think . . . I think I might have ruined it for both of us, Hajime. Stupid, mean,  _ selfish _ —”

“Knock it off,” Hajime said, not unkindly, and pressed something into Tooru’s hands.

Tooru pulled away just enough to see what it was that Hajime had given him. His phone.

“You said ‘if he ever talks to me again,’” Hajime said. “You’ll never know whether he will or won’t if you don’t try. Start trying now.”

Tooru opened his phone with shaking hands. No new messages from the contact saved as  _ Tobio-chan <3 _ .

_ Hey,  _ Tooru typed out, every keystroke feeling like a monumental risk. _ I’m sorry. Can we talk? _

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The first six hours were hell. Tooru checked his phone continuously, feeling his heart rate spike every time it chimed with a notification, only to have his hopes dashed again and again as the name on the screen never proved to be Tobio’s.

The next six hours were somehow even worse. Successive texts met no reply, each one sinking into the oppressive silence on the other end of the line with barely a ripple.

_ I’m sorry _ .

_ Tobio, I just want to talk _ .

_ Please answer, so I know you’re okay _ . 

_ Can I see you? _

_ Please just give me another chance. I’m so sorry _ .

Nothing.

“Something’s wrong,” Tooru declared, pacing from one end of the bedroom to the other with quick, agitated strides. 

Hajime sat cross-legged on the bed, frowning down at his laptop screen. “You don’t know that, Tooru. He probably just needs some space from you right now.”

“Well, has he responded to _ you _ yet?”

Hajime’s lips thinned. “. . . No.”

“Exactly. As I said, something’s wrong. We—we need to do something, call the police, report him missing—”

“Whoa, Shittykawa, slow your roll,” Hajime protested, putting his hands up. “I doubt he’d appreciate—”

“I know!” Tooru brightened, pouncing on his phone. “I’ll call that freckly friend of his, Yamaguchi. He’s the most reasonable of the bunch. He’ll know where Tobio is.”

Yamaguchi did not, in fact, know where Tobio was, and seemed alarmed that Tooru was asking. It was this that made Hajime close his laptop and stand to take Tooru’s hands in his. 

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Hajime said quietly. “He can look after himself. He’s been doing it for years, apparently.”

“Okay,” Tooru said, trying to suppress the nausea that had risen in his gut. If Tobio had gone and gotten himself hurt, it would be on Tooru’s head. “A few more hours. We’ll give him a few more hours before we call the cops.”

But just as that self-imposed timer was expiring, Tooru’s phone rang, displaying Tobio’s name on the screen. Tooru nearly broke his foot against the nightstand in lunging for it, bringing it to his ear with shaking hands.

“Hello?” he breathed.

It was not Tobio’s soft tones on the other end—instead, a cacophony of raised voices greeted him, overlapping and rebutting each other.

“NO LEMME GO I CAN DO IT—hi, is this Oikawa because if so FUCK YOU YOU MADE MY FRIEND CRY—”

“‘Fuck you?’ What kind of weak threat is that? Tell him we’re going to destroy everything he loves and then dance on the ashes. Here—give me that—”

“Fuck  _ off _ , Kei, I can—”

“Both of you, stop it and get over here—we agreed  _ I’d _ be the one to—Shouyou, tell him I’ve got a baseball bat and I’m not afraid to go to jail—” 

A yelp, a loud smack, and then a thump, as if the phone had been batted out of someone’s hands and onto the floor. 

Tooru pulled the phone away from his ear and frowned. “Shrimpy-chan?” he guessed. And that’d been the ice-eyed beanpole and Yamaguchi in the background, he was pretty sure. Why did they have Tobio’s phone? New dread clutched at his throat, drawing his windpipe closed.

“Okay, my turn.” And now it was the sweet-faced blonde girl on the phone, breathless and apologetic. A door slammed, muffling the noise of fighting in the background.

“Where’s Tobio?” Oikawa pressed. “Is he okay? What happened? Why isn’t he—”

“I,” the girl said with a shocking amount of steel laced into the words, “don’t think you have any right to ask that. Do you?”

It was as if she’d slapped him. Tooru’s mouth snapped shut. He really, really didn’t, not after what he'd done. 

“Please,” he tried, voice wavering. “Just tell me if he’s alright.”

“He’s alright enough. No thanks to you.”

Tooru ignored the accusation in her tone, pressing his free hand to his lips. Tears of relief pricked at his eyes. Hajime, reading his face, sighed and sank back onto the bed with tension bleeding out of his shoulders. 

“Can I please just talk to—”

“No, you may  _ not _ .”

“But I’m his—”

“His soulmate? Is that what you were going to say? You haven’t acted very much like one, Oikawa-san. Tell me, does a soulmate drive the person they’re supposed to care for most into the dark and the rain with unkind words? Does a soulmate break their beloved’s heart for their own arrogance and pride?”

“No,” Tooru said, very quietly. She was right, about all of it, and it cut him to the bone. He hadn’t behaved as a soulmate should. In that moment, he would’ve given anything in his power to turn back the clock and erase the previous day. Erase the hurt he’d dealt with uncaring hands. “I’m sorry.”

“You’d better be.” Her tone had surpassed cold, become positively arctic. “I don’t care what those marks on your skin say. I’m Tobio’s friend, which means I chose him myself, no matter the universe’s plans. I’ve loved him longer and better than you, so listen to me when I say this: you get one more chance. One more chance to show him—and me, and Tadashi and Shouyou and Kei—that you’re worthy of him. Love him like he deserves, or I swear you’ll never see him again. And then I’ll let the others at you. Tadashi really does have a baseball bat.”

Tooru bowed his head, shivering a little. The thought of Freckles-chan with a bat was actually quite frightening.“I understand.”

“I don’t think you do. Don’t try and contact him again. He’ll come to you when he’s ready.”

The line went dead, leaving Tooru staring at the phone with a strange mix of emotions swelling in his chest. Relief. Shame. Grudging respect. Regret enough to power a small country.

One more chance, huh?

It was more than Tooru deserved. He knew that. So he’d better make the most of it—he’d better start crafting the best goddamn apology in the history of apologies.

“What?” Hajime said, warily. Tooru was aware his mouth had stretched into the grin that had made more than one of his opponents across the volleyball net cry.

Tobio’s friends wanted Tooru to start loving Tobio better? They wanted worthiness? They wanted extravagant gestures and quiet reassurances? They’d get it.

After all, Tooru had never backed down from a challenge. He didn’t intend to start now, not when the stakes were as high as they were. Not when it was Tobio’s heart on the line.

Tobio deserved better. He deserved a soulmate that treated him gently, with love and respect and dignity. Tooru intended to do anything he needed to—cry, beg, get down on his knees and grovel—to ensure that he got the chance to show Tobio that he could be that soulmate.

Tooru intended to win Tobio back, even if it took him a lifetime to do so.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the chapters keep getting longer,,,
> 
> Anyway, yes, Tooru has finally realized his behavior was shitty and that he needs to apologize! Still got a ways to go, though. And Miwa to face down. Can't forget about that. Next chapter will start unraveling some of the mysteries, such as what was that random house that Tobio ran to??? And how was Miwa so sure he'd end up there???
> 
> Hope you're all having a good night! And for those of you that live in the U.S. (like me rip) please join me in a prayer circle/hope circle/spell circle/however-you-choose-to-worship-if-you-do-at-all-circle for Georgia.


	12. Twelve

Tobio surfaced from sleep as if from a pool of still, deep water, dreams clinging like cobwebs. He felt warm, safe—held. A pair of arms encircled his waist, drawing him back against a tall, solid body. His head rested on another person’s lap, gentle hands carding through his hair.

“Tooru?” Tobio murmured. “Hajime?”

The arms around his waist tightened, drawing a wheeze from Tobio’s chest.

“Certainly not,” Tadashi said into his ear, sounding nettled. 

It came crashing back down onto him with the weight of an avalanche. He remembered the fight, the rain, the prison, the tree. He remembered Shouyou’s fingers clamped like a vise around his chin, his best friend’s words piercing the veil of fear and pain that had gripped him so tightly. He remembered standing up, sobbing out the most dire of their code words, the stumbling walk back to an unfamiliar car.

Recognizing the bedspread upon which he was lying, he did not remember how he came to be in Tadashi and Kei’s—and now Hitoka’s—apartment. 

“You had a fever,” Shouyou said from above him, somehow anticipating his confusion. His fingers tightened in Tobio’s hair, tugging gently. “You’ve been out for about fourteen hours, ever since we put you in Kenma’s car.”

“Fourteen hours?” Tobio gasped. He braced one hand under himself, trying to sit up. “I have to—”

“Nope,” Tadashi said firmly, throwing one leg over both of Tobio’s and pinning him to the bed. 

Tobio struggled for a few brief moments, only going limp when his head began to swim. “Why the fuck are you so strong,” he muttered. 

“Years of wrestling with Kei’s bullshit,” Tadashi said cheerfully, resting his chin on the top of Tobio’s head. “There’s no point in trying to go anywhere. We’re taking care of everything.”

“My classes—”

“Kei already emailed your professors to tell them you can’t make it.”

“My shift—”

“We told the boss you ate the same bad batch of fish that we did when we left the hotel last night to search for you. I even threw up on command.”

“My—my soulmates—”

“They’ve been taken care of.” It was Kei’s cool voice interrupting as he pushed the door open with one hand. He used the other to toss a phone— _ Tobio’s _ phone—onto the bed. 

Tobio squirmed his head around in Shouyou’s hands, eyeing Kei over Tadashi’s shoulder. “. . . What does that mean? How did you even know there was something, um. To be taken care of?”

He hadn’t told them what had happened, had he? In his fever haze, maybe he’d let something slip . . . 

“Miwa-san told me that somebody made you upset,” Shouyou said, leaning down to look into Tobio’s upturned face. “Then we saw the texts on your phone from Oikawa, so it was easy to guess that it was his fault. We called him and told him to leave you alone.”

Nosy, overbearing,  _ assholes _ . Tobio loved them dearly. He could well imagine how that conversation had gone: Shouyou shouting down the phone with Kei providing cutting commentary in the background, Tadashi and Hitoka tag-teaming with each other in that frighteningly competent manner of theirs.

Then it hit him. Miwa. They’d gone to see  _ Miwa _ ?

“Miwa told you where to find me.” Of course she had; that dilapidated townhouse he’d ended up at was so old it wasn’t even on the city’s maps.

Shouyou hummed in the back of his throat. “Yes, and thank gods she did, idiot. Sitting out there in the rain like that. Tch. Could’ve  _ died _ .”

“Wasn’t gonna die,” Tobio mumbled, just to be contrary, and yelped when a small finger flicked him in the forehead. “ _ Ow _ , Shouyou.”

“You should go see your sister,” Shouyou said, in one of those bizarre pivots of logic that simultaneously made no sense and made all the sense in the world. 

Tobio shrunk into himself a little. He’d been less than kind to Miwa, last time he’d seen her. He’d been a coward.

“She knows,” he said. “About the hotel. I told her.”

“About damn time,” Kei snorted, finally settling onto the bed. Tobio nudged him with a bare foot until he rolled his eyes and gave in, resting a hand on Tobio’s ankle and patting awkwardly, as if Tobio were a spooked horse. “You know I think you should’ve been honest with her from the beginning.”

“Maybe,” Tobio conceded, turning his face into the bedspread. And maybe not. Maybe a year and a half of ignorance had been the best gift he ever could’ve given his sister, to whom he’d given very little.

“You should go see Miwa-san,” Shouyou said again. “She was afraid for you.”

“Furious with me, more like.” He’d seen her face when he was walking away, and he knew his sister’s rage as well as he knew his own.

“Furious  _ because _ she was scared,” Hitoka said, pushing her way in the door with a tea tray balanced in her hands. “I didn’t even talk to her and I know that much. She loves you, Tobio.”

“Well, now she hates me,” Tobio said miserably. He must’ve been out of his mind, telling her about the hotel. She was in prison, and he was still managing to find ways to ruin her life.

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” Tadashi scolded, driving a pointy elbow into Tobio’s kidney. Tobio let out a grunt of pain. “No, she doesn’t.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Tobio admitted with a sigh. Even in the depths of his misery, he was unable to truly believe that his sister could ever hate him. Speaking of people who hated him— 

“But Oikawa-san definitely does.”

His name dropped into the room like a stone, dragging the mood down with it. Hitoka pressed her lips together, nudging Tobio and Tadashi into sitting up and accepting mugs of tea.

“What,” Shouyou said, and hesitated. “What happened, Tobio? Miwa-san told me a little bit, but um, I don’t think she really knew either. You didn’t tell her much.”

Tobio stared down at his hands, watching steam curl out of “his” designated mug, the blue one with an unreadable English slogan on the side. Kei had picked it up at a corner store some months ago, along with the obnoxiously yellow one in Shouyou’s hands and the mellow green one in Tadashi’s. Hitoka’s pink one was probably still in the cabinet above the sink.

It came out of him slowly and painfully, every word dragged from the very core of him with razor-edged fish-hooks. He told them about the offer his soulmates had made him and why he’d rejected it; the way Iwaizumi had pushed him regardless; and the way Oikawa had risen to his feet and flung words at him like knives. 

“Give me your phone,” Kei said once Tobio’s voice had petered out, lips closing behind a description of his flight from Oikawa and Iwaizumi’s apartment. His face was parchment pale, mouth curled into a snarl.

“No,” Tobio said, placing a hand over it protectively, because he’d seen that look on Kei’s face before and it never ended well.

“ _ Give me your phone _ ,” Kei ordered again, half-wild with fury. “Goddamnit, Tobio. I knew it was bad but not that bad. I’m going to call him and—”

“Please,” Tobio choked out, “please, don’t.”

He didn’t want another fight. He couldn’t take it. People tried to protect him and they ended up like Miwa, locked away and lonely.

Whatever Kei saw in Tobio’s face broke his resolve and he turned away with a vitriolic curse, pushing his glasses up his nose and rubbing at his eyes. Tadashi shifted around on the bed just enough to get a comforting hand on Kei’s back.

“Where were you?” Hitoka said softly into the stifling silence. “When we found you. I’ve never been to that part of town before.”

Tobio stared unseeingly at the ceiling, grounding himself with the feeling of Shouyou’s fingers in his hair. “It was my . . . my father’s place.”

“Ah.” 

They left it at that. 

Tobio closed his eyes, and said, “Thank you,” because he owed them that much at least, for not pushing. For coming after him in the rain and dragging him home. For being there to catch him, time after time, when he fell. The four of them—they knew the worst things about him, his rage and his bluntness, his sister’s crime and his father’s ghost—and they’d chosen to stay beside him anyway. Tobio owed them his life and more.

Tadashi sighed, his breath raising goosebumps on Tobio’s skin. “What do you want to do now?”

“I don’t know.” The admission was small, scared. He’d lost something in that fight with his soulmates, however new and fragile it had been. He still wasn’t sure how to stand under the grief of it. He still wasn’t sure if he wanted to see either of them again quite yet.

“Okay.” Tadashi said, and pulled him a little closer. “Then just—just stay.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And Tobio did. 

He stayed for almost an entire week, sleeping on a guest futon in Hitoka’s room. Shouyou departed after the second day, returning to his soulmate and his soulmate’s giant house. He dropped in periodically, swinging by with home-cooked meals or enthusiastic stories about whatever nonsense Kenma’s best friend Kuroo had gotten into recently.

Kei and Tadashi and Hitoka drifted in and out with a steady rhythm, attending class or their respective shifts at the hotel. Tobio followed them out after a couple days, but returned each night to their apartment instead of his own. He didn’t want to move back into his own cold and empty rooms, a pointed reminder of what he’d lost. 

Didn’t want to—but had to, because (as he’d told Oikawa) they were his. Also, the others were starting to get twitchy around him—disappearing into other rooms to take phone calls, holding hushed conversations after he’d retreated to his futon—and it was probably high time he got out of their hair.

He packed what little he had up on a Friday, feeling strange without the routine of departing for the club after the hotel. It made him sad, not to dance, and then he only got sadder once he was left facing his door on his own, no one to greet him at the threshold for a kiss.

He pushed his way into his apartment, lights sputtering to low life. A thin layer of dust had already coated every available surface, layering the kitchen table and the counter. Tobio ran a finger through the grime on the table. Had it already been weeks since Oikawa had sat there in that very seat, eating the meal Tobio had prepared for him with careful hands?

It felt like yesterday.

Tobio wandered toward the fridge, staring blindly at the photographs pinned neatly to the front. Most of them were of his friends, frozen forever in moments of joy or fondness or indulgent exasperation. One was of Miwa—her senior portrait. She’d been wearing hastily-applied concealer over the bruise on her cheek from where their father had slammed her head into the stair banister just the night before. 

The blow had been meant for Tobio. Miwa had stepped in front of him and taken it instead.

Tobio rested his fingertips gently on the glossy surface of his sister’s picture, letting them drag down and over those familiar blue eyes, the somber line of her mouth. 

It had been a week. It was time to stop running.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tobio rushed down the long hallway and through the double doors of the Women’s Prison, heart jackrabbiting in his chest. He needed to beat Miwa to the chair. If he walked in and she was already waiting for him, he wasn’t sure what he’d do. Leave, probably.

Luck was on his side, however, and he had thirty excruciating seconds to himself before she settled down across from him, uncharacteristically hesitant. Tobio opened his mouth, apologies crowding on his tongue, but she held up a hand.

“I want to go first.”

Tobio nodded, even though his fingers tightened around the phone until the plastic creaked in protest. It was the least he could do.

“I love you.” The words were said so plainly that for a long moment Tobio struggled to understand; and by the time he did, she had already moved on.

“I love you,” she said again. “And nothing is ever going to change that. Not the job you do or the company you keep or what you choose to do with your body. Of course I wish you’d told me the truth, Tobio—but I understand why you didn’t. I understand that you were ashamed of yourself. I need you to know that  _ I _ am  _ never _ going to be ashamed of you. You could drop out of school, you could become a mime, you could dance naked on the street for all I care, and I would still be proud to call you my little brother.”

He dared a look up at her, pierced to the core by the blazing intensity in her eyes. She was serious about this; serious as she’d ever been.

“Besides.” The corner of her mouth quirked up, drawing a small smile from him in response. “Seriously, Tobio. Do you think I’m in any sort of position to judge? I’m quite literally a convicted murderer.”

“You were justified,” he reminded her. 

She shrugged. “And so are you. You’re doing what you need to do to survive.”

The words reached a place deep inside of him, soothing an old and secret ache that had been roused to flaring agony by the fight with his soulmates. 

Miwa didn’t hate him, or think he was some sort of irredeemable slut. Miwa was still proud of him. It was going to be okay.

“I’m sorry,” he said, whispering the words past the lump in his throat. “I shouldn’t have run away after telling you the truth.”

She rolled her eyes. “Damn right you shouldn’t have. You scared the shit out of your poor little friends, making them run all over the city looking for you.”

“I was upset!”

“I’ll say,” Miwa snorted. “You’d better tell me the full story. All I got last time you were here was something about someone calling you a whore.”

The telling was no easier for it being the second time. Tobio forced the words out, left sick to his stomach by the end of it. His emotions were still an indecipherable tangle—rage, grief, fear. The only thing that he was certain of was that he hadn’t deserved what had been said to him.

In fact, he still wasn’t sure when he wanted to see his soulmates again—and had been ignoring all contact from either of them as a consequence—but Oikawa had abruptly stopped texting him a few days earlier, apologies and pleas for forgiveness dropping off into silence. Maybe he’d decided that  _ he _ didn’t want to see Tobio; that he and Iwaizumi were better off without him anyways.

Maybe that fight had broken something between them that couldn’t be fixed. 

Although Tobio knew it was pathetic, some part of him didn’t want to be cut from his soulmates’ lives for good, left out in the cold. He was like a stray cat that returned again and again to the doorstep of some shitty old man who hated cats, all because there was a possibility of food being handed out alongside the curses and the kicks.

“I see,” Miwa said, once Tobio was finished. Tobio eyed her suspiciously. She was handling this far better than he’d expected. Her temper—Tobio’s temper—was nowhere to be seen, replaced by a considering expression that drew her eyebrows together over her nose. “At least they told me the truth. I thought for sure they’d try and sugarcoat it for their own benefit.”

  
“They?” Tobio said warily.

“Your soulmates, of course,” Miwa said, tilting her head to the side. “They came to see me a few days ago. They told me what happened. Asked for advice on how to earn your forgiveness.”

Tobio’s mouth dropped open inelegantly. “You met Oikawa-san and Iwaizumi-san?” He hadn’t even told them he had a sister, how had they—

With a blinding flash of clarity, Tobio recalled the closed-door conferences his friends had been having the past week, the hushed conversations and sideways looks. They’d arranged this—told his soulmates about Miwa, and how to find her. 

“They were nice to you, right?” he asked anxiously. Someone who had unkind words for a prostitute could certainly muster up more than a few barbs for a woman in prison for murder.

Her eyes glittered with amusement. “Quite nice, even though I wasn’t so kind to them. They want you back, Tobio. Oikawa especially seems particularly passionate about it.”

He would be. Oikawa lived his life in a state of single-minded intensity that others could only dream of, driven to the limits of reason and beyond. It was his strongest asset. It was also his greatest downfall.

“I’m scared,” Tobio admitted. “I, um, I like them a lot, but . . .”

“But they hurt you,” Miwa finished. “Listen, Tobio . . . I’m not gonna tell you what to do. That’s up to you in the end. It’s your heart. I can only say from talking to them that they seem incredibly sincere, and willing to do whatever it takes to make you understand how sorry they are. I think you should give them a chance.”

Tobio bit his lip, slipping one hand underneath his shirt to finger the dark marks branded on his chest. Sometimes, he thought life would be much easier if soulmates didn’t exist at all, if they were all Unmarked like Tadashi and Kei, free to love as they chose.

Miwa’s face softened, following the motion of his hand. “Ah, Tobio. Not everyone’s like mom and dad. You know that, right?”

Tobio nodded. He did. He’d seen Shouyou around Kenma enough to know that much was true. He just wasn’t sure if he  _ himself _ was enough unlike his father to be able to forgive Oikawa and Iwaizumi for hurting him—as his father had never forgiven his mother for leaving. Tobio had been vulnerable with his soulmates once, and they’d ripped his beating heart out from his chest and stepped on it.

He did not plan to ever allow such a thing to happen again.

Miwa leaned forward in her seat, pressing her hand flat to the glass between them. Tobio mirrored her without thinking. For a moment, he pretended he could feel the warmth of her skin against his palm, the sensation of her long fingers tangling with his.

“You can’t let this destroy you.”

Tobio opened his mouth to protest that he hadn’t; she silenced him with a look.

“I can see it in your eyes, Tobio. You’re thinking that maybe loving someone is too much effort after all. It’s too risky, right? Leaves you open to too much pain.”

Tobio lowered his eyes, annoyed. Damned older sisters and their freakish intuition.

“You know what also causes too much pain? Shutting out the people who love you. Whatever else they’ve done, Oikawa and Iwaizumi clearly care for you a great deal. It takes strength to close yourself off, Tobio. I won’t deny that. But it takes even more strength to open yourself up again—to choose kindness and courage and trust even when the world has given you no reason to do such a thing. It will be hard. But I think you can do it.”

Tobio bit his lip, fighting the tears that stung the back of his throat. “And why would I do that? Why would I choose to trust again?”

Miwa smiled, and the expression made her look years younger, a version of herself that had never dreamed of death or blood or the inside of a prison cell. “Love.”

Before the fight, there had been gentle touches and soft words and promises exchanged. There had been two men in an alleyway, defending a complete stranger. There had been nights spent dancing and nights spent eating and nights spent talking about everything and anything and nothing at all. Yes, there had been love, however much Tobio had struggled to admit it. 

Was he willing to chance his heart on the slim hope that things would work out between the three of them? Was he willing to try again?

Then he thought of Shouyou’s boundless enthusiasm; Kei’s unflinching pragmatism. Tadashi’s drive to protect the people around him and the way Hitoka smiled in the darkest of nights. He thought of Miwa’s iron-willed courage, and the way she’d endured trials far greater than this one without ever once losing hope.

Even if it all went wrong, Tobio knew he wouldn’t be alone. It was this knowledge that gave him the strength to open his mouth and ask, “How?”

She met his eyes. “I think it’s time you tell them the truth. About everything.”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took me a little bit longer than usual! I moved back into my dorm this week and that sure was An Experience. Hope everybody is staying sane and safe out there. :)


	13. Thirteen

“Blue.”

“Yes, but what kind of blue? Periwinkle? Navy? Sapphire?”

“I don’t know,” Hajime growled. “Blue is blue, Shittykawa. Just pick one.”

Tooru glared up at him, eyes wild behind his glasses. His hair was sticking up in unattractive tufts, a consequence of how much he’d been tugging on it. “‘Just pick one?’” he demanded. “This is important, Iwa-chan. Ask him what kind of blue.”

“Tooru, you’re being—”

Tooru snarled—honest to gods  _ snarled _ —at him, lips pulling away from his teeth. “It’s important.  _ Ask him _ .”

Hajime rolled his eyes but complied, typing the question into the open chat between himself and Tobio’s friend Hinata. The reply came moments later and Hajime squinted at the screen, trying to decipher the message.

“Uh, I think this is supposed to say azure.”

“Good,” Tooru said, returning to yanking fabric samples out of the box between his legs. “Good. Azure will pair nicely with the cream walls.”

“Tooru,” Hajime tried again. “Do you think that maybe you’re—”

“I’m what,” Tooru snapped, crossing his arms defensively over his chest. “Overreacting? Panicking? Going overboard?”

Hajime surveyed the room, taking in the paint swatches and the half-unpacked boxes and the scattered idea boards. “Maybe. Yes.”

Tooru seemed to deflate, drawing his legs in close to his chest and resting his chin on his knees. “I . . . I fucked up, Hajime. I have to make it right.”

“And you will,” Hajime said firmly. “But this is—”

“It’s not excessive.” Tooru flung an arm out, gesturing at the room around them. “It’s no less than Tobio deserves, Hajime. I need him to know how serious I am about making it up to him.”

Hajime sighed. “Okay. Just . . . okay, Tooru.” He wasn’t opposed to the idea of a grandiose apology—quite the opposite, really—and he knew he had his own amends to make with Tobio, but Tooru had a tendency to overdo things. Luckily, Hajime had a complimentary tendency to stop him when things got out of hand.

Things weren’t quite out of hand. Not yet.

Hajime nudged Tooru with a foot, rocking him onto his back like an overturned turtle. “You should get ready. We have to go soon.”

Tooru grumbled but stood, disappearing into the bathroom for the thirteen-step beauty routine he insisted on. For once, Hajime forebore his teasing commentary, and even spent a little extra time picking out his own outfit. He wanted—he needed—to make a good impression.

After the fight with Tobio and Tooru’s belated realization that he’d been the one in the wrong, Tooru had spent hours frantically texting Tobio, begging for a chance to make his apologies in person. There had been only silence from Tobio’s end, and then, of course, that memorable phone call in which Tobio’s friends had expressed in no uncertain terms that Tooru was to give Tobio the space to sort through things in his own time.

That was fine. Space was the least of what Tobio deserved, after what they’d done to him. Tooru, though, had started to get anxious—he needed information, he stressed, if his apology was to be sufficiently acceptable.

So it had fallen to Hajime to contact Tobio’s friends and try to wheedle details from them: the pet Tobio would choose if he had the means and the motivation, the way he preferred his eggs, his favorite color (which Hajime now knew to be azure). Tooru would’ve done it himself, except he wasn’t sure that any of Tobio’s friends would actually talk to him. 

Hajime didn’t entirely mind being the middleman. This was an opportunity to learn more about his soulmate, a chance to understand more of what went on behind those wary eyes. Hajime wasn’t like Tooru, with that bizarre innate ability to read people at a glance, but even he could tell that Tobio was hiding something. Something that made him skittish and cagey, his shoulders always braced as if for a fight.

His efforts had paid off. Somewhere in the exchange of information, Hajime had learned that Tobio actually had an older sister. Kageyama Miwa. Hinata had rambled on about her, how cool and amazing she was, practically “the best ever,” and then had excitedly declared that if Hajime and Tooru wanted to understand Tobio better, his sister was a good place to start. 

Hajime had the vague feeling that they were being set up. But he didn’t really mind it if they were—he’d pay any number of high prices, if it meant having Tobio back in his life.

Which brought them here, to the Women’s Prison.

It had been a bit of shock, learning that Tobio’s much-praised older sister was in jail for an undisclosed crime. Hajime had practically seen the wheels turning in Tooru’s head, at least until he’d smacked him. Making assumptions was what had gotten them into this mess.

Upon walking into the prison, Hajime and Tooru were guided through security, and then into a room lined with windowed cubicles. Hajime chose one at random, Tooru settling down at his side. He used one hand to pinch Tooru’s bouncing leg, the other to prop the phone so they could both hear.

The woman who sat down across from them was everything and nothing like Hajime had expected.

Even if he hadn’t already known she was Tobio’s sister, he would’ve been able to pick her out of a lineup with ease. It wasn’t just the physical similarities—those goddamn eyes, the cut of her cheekbones—but the very way she carried herself. She moved with the same reserved wariness, faced them head-on with the same stubborn determination firming the lines of her jaw.

But the way she smiled—Tobio had never smiled at them like that. Like she’d gladly eat them whole, and leave the bones for the vultures.

“I know who you are,” Kageyama Miwa said, “and you have ten seconds to convince me not to kill you once I get out of here.”

Now Hajime was  _ certain _ they’d been set up. Having done their fair share of threatening him and Tooru, Tobio’s friends had out-sourced a second, more fearsome, session.

“Ah—” Hajime said, flustered by the militant look in Miwa’s eyes. It was like dealing with Tobio at his most insistent, only dialed up until the knob broke off.

“Ten,” said Miwa sweetly. “Nine.”

Tooru turned the phone so his lips were almost directly on the speaker. And there was the man Hajime had fallen in love with—would always have fallen in love with, no matter what the mark on his wrist said—eyes blazing with a certainty that made Hajime want to march into hell right alongside him. 

“We love Tobio,” Tooru said simply. “He’s our soulmate. And I promise that we’re going to spend the rest of our lives making sure he knows that.”

“You had your chance,” she said with a sneer. “You fucked it up.”

Tooru flinched. Only the tightness around his eyes gave lie to the aura of absolute confidence he was projecting, hinting at the ruin of fear and uncertainty that lay beneath the facade. Miwa had to forgive them, or at least understand them a little bit. If she didn’t, then Tobio never would either. “Yes, I . . . I did. I said some deplorable things, the things that I thought would hurt your brother most, because I was jealous. I called him a whore, a slut, and worse. I was awful to him. And the worst thing is, this . . . is not surprising. I’ve been told I’m not the easiest to get along with.” 

There, a ghost of a smile. It was something Hajime had said to him, during their first big fight. 

“But I’ve also been told that I don’t know how to give up—that once I want something, hell or high water won’t stand in my way. Believe me when I say that I  _ want _ your brother. I want to make him the happiest he’s ever been. I want to be the reason he smiles and one of the people he comes home to at night. I want to love him like he deserves.”

Her lip curled. “And you think that’s enough? Your  _ love _ ?”

Hajime said quietly, “It’s the best we have.” He met her gaze steadily, fighting not to blink. “Miwa-san, Tobio is—”

—beautiful, and amazing, and little bit broken but still so damn strong, and kind and dedicated and caring; dorky, but able to dance like sin itself; secretive and blunt and irate but always working to be better—

“—extraordinary. We just want the chance to prove it to him.”

“You know,” she said, and Hajime couldn’t tell if the way her eyes had narrowed was assessing or simply vicious, “he came and saw me the night you had that fight. The last time a man made my brother look the way he did, I killed him.”

Hajime shivered. Perhaps she was—

“I’m not joking.”

With that smile, he well believed it. A quick glance at Tooru revealed he’d gone blank-faced with shock, so Hajime leaned forward. “I understand.”

And he did. When Tobio had run out of the apartment, Hajime had been angrier than he’d ever been. Furious with Tooru—who seemed determined to drag all three of them to hell with his inability to understand the hurt he was causing—and furious with himself, for not intervening sooner. For not shutting Tooru up the instant such poisonous words had come hissing out of his soulmate’s mouth.

“We don’t deserve him.” Tooru again, his gaze fixed somewhere over Miwa’s left shoulder. “I know. But, gods. Haven’t you ever been so close to something so beautiful that you’d damn yourself just for the chance to touch?”

It was this that made the harsh lines of her face soften, some sympathy warming her cold gaze. “You’ve got it bad.”

“Gladly,” Tooru said, at the same time Hajime said, “Wouldn’t change a thing.”

She let out a long sigh, resting her chin in her palm. Abruptly, she was just a young woman a couple years older than they were, exhausted and frightened and aching beyond measure. Regardless of the fact that she’d threatened to kill him at least twice in the past five minutes, Hajime kind of wanted to cup her face in his hands to see if he could try and ease some of the strain.

There was just something about a Kageyama, he supposed.

“He’ll come back to you.” Her words were quiet; Hajime had to raise the phone closer to his ear to hear. “Tobio has always been resilient like that. He runs, but he comes back. Like a kicked puppy.”

Hajime winced. Thinking of himself as a puppy-kicker was not a pleasant mental image. By the grimace on Tooru’s face, he could tell his soulmate was thinking the same. 

“You came here to get advice on how to earn his forgiveness, right? That’s what I was given to understand.”

Tooru nodded eagerly. “Please. Anything.”

She shrugged. “It’s very simple. Tobio has lived his entire life afraid that people will leave him, and he’s been proven right too many times. This time, prove him wrong.”

That would be difficult, Hajime thought. But not impossible. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” she snorted. “I’m still gonna beat the shit out of you two once I get out of here.”

Despite himself, Hajime laughed. “I’ll look forward to it.”

Tooru made to put the phone down, and Miwa held up a hand to stop him. “One more thing.”

Her eyes bored into theirs, older than her years. “I think . . . I think Tobio’s going to tell you something soon. He has to, if he wants to be able to trust you fully, and be trusted in turn. Just please, when he does . . . listen.”

Tooru leaned forward, eyes once again lit with that dreadful intensity. Hajime leaned to match him, like he always would. It didn’t matter which one of them said it, because in this they spoke with one voice. “We promise.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tobio stood in the hallway outside Oikawa and Iwaizumi’s apartment, picking nervously at the skin around his fingernails. His feet felt rooted to the spot—as they had been for the past twenty minutes as he debated with himself. 

On the one hand, he  _ did _ want to reconcile with his soulmates. It had been two weeks since the fight, and the last three days he’d woken with one hand pressed to the marks on his chest, his mouth silently shaping the names of the two men he’d been so sure of. He missed them, like the ocean missed the shore, with equal inevitability. He wanted to be with them; couldn’t stop thinking about them—about the feeling of Oikawa’s hands carding through his hair, or the fine laughter lines at the corner of Iwaizumi’s eyes when he smiled. He ached for them. It had been a special kind of hell, maintaining his self-imposed distance.

On the other hand, Tobio had found that as the days passed, the flaring fear and rage had receded, leaving behind a deep and abiding hurt. He’d trusted Oikawa. Oikawa had then thrown that trust back in his face. All the insults his soulmate had slung at him—nasty, vile accusations—lingered in the back of his mind, playing on repeat. He couldn’t be with a man who truly thought so lowly of him, soulmates or not. He had at least that much self-respect.

So here Tobio was, trying to screw up the courage to knock on the door. The only piece of information preventing him from fleeing entirely was the knowledge that Oikawa did in fact seem to be sorry. The pleading text messages, along with Miwa’s testimony, confirmed this. Iwaizumi was sorry too—he’d asked Shouyou to pass on the message. 

Shouyou had, of course, but with a roll of his eyes. He, along with Kei, was of the impression that Tobio shouldn’t be open to forgiving his soulmates quite yet. Another week at least, Kei had sniffed. That would really make them sweat.

Then Tadashi had said that Kei was just being vindictive, and Tobio should do what he felt was right. 

Tobio took a step forward, and almost immediately retreated. What  _ was _ right? There were only two ways this conversation could end—either with the three of them agreeing to work on forgiveness and moving forward, or with Tobio once again left out in the cold, those marks on his chest little more than a testament to broken dreams. 

Tobio wanted the former. Because no matter the scope of his hurt, the breadth of his love was greater.

He took another step forward. He was considering taking it back again when the door to the apartment swung open, revealing Iwaizumi standing frozen in the threshold with one hand wrapped around a trash bag. 

“Tobio,” he said immediately, dropping the bag. “Hi there.” Voice impossibly gentle, he reached out toward Tobio, but didn’t approach, leaving his palms upturned and waiting. Not a demand for Tobio to move closer, but an extended invitation that Tobio could choose to accept or deny on his own time.

Tobio took a stumbling step forward. Then another one. And another. Haltingly, he placed both of his hands in Iwaizumi’s. An instant sense of satisfaction and ease flooded over him, spreading from his sternum outwards. 

_ Yes _ , Tobio thought with a sigh. Yes, this was what he had been missing. 

In the next instant, Tobio let out an undignified yelp as he was abruptly dragged forward and crushed into an extremely solid chest. Despite the fact that Tobio actually overtopped Iwaizumi by a not-insignificant number of centimeters, Iwaizumi still managed to make him feel small and protected within the circle of his arms. 

“I’m sorry,” Iwaizumi whispered fiercely into Tobio’s hair. A pair of lips pressed against his forehead with feverish intention. “Gods, Tobio. I’m so fucking sorry.”

The apology was a bucket of ice water dousing the fragile warmth that had sprung to life in his chest. Tobio stiffened and stepped away. Right. This was not a social call. 

Iwaizumi seemed to understand, offering Tobio a pained smile. “Why don’t you come in?”

Tobio nodded, and slipped past Iwaizumi and into the apartment, pausing when he emerged into the kitchen. Oikawa had his back to the door, bent over and peering into the open dishwasher. 

“Iwa- _ chan _ ,” he complained. “Back so soon? Don’t tell me you got lazy and dumped the trash outside the door again.”

His voice. The sweet, high notes of it sounded like bells in Tobio’s ears, overlain by the knowledge of what it sounded like lowered in a frigid hiss.

Tobio cleared his throat softly and Oikawa froze. His shoulders heaved once as he visibly steeled himself.

“Tobio-chan,” he said as he turned around. The plate in his hands was set down on the countertop with painstaking and unnecessary care. Oikawa, who Tobio had never seen in a state less than suave and irritatingly certain of himself, looked awkward standing there, his teeth dug into his lower lip. Tobio fought the sudden and absurd urge to laugh.

“Um,” Oikawa said, and gestured toward a chair at the kitchen table. “Sit, please.”

Tobio sat.

They settled in across from him, and Tobio was forcibly reminded of the last time they’d been here, Oikawa pressing a hand under Tobio’s shirt and the both of them rewriting his entire existence with a kiss. They could rewrite him again, now, if they chose. Leave him not with two empty soulmarks, but with two meaningless ones.

“Tobio,” Oikawa said, and stopped. “Oh, Tobio, I was afraid I’d never see you again.” 

He turned away for a moment, clenching his jaw, but his voice was as strong as ever. “I would’ve understood if you didn’t want to. And, um. You can leave at any time. We’re not trying to trap you here.”

Tobio nodded and Oikawa leaned forward with his hands clenched tightly together, his eyes uncomfortably earnest. “Tobio, I’m  _ sorry _ . What I said to you—it was shameful. Awful. Hurtful, and malicious, and nasty. I was jealous, and I took it out on you, and that was inexcusable. I was a bastard to you for no goddamn reason, and not a word of what I said was true. You’re not a whore, and you have  _ nothing _ to be ashamed of. You were right—I don’t have any idea of what it’s like to be you, and I shouldn’t have judged you for trying to make the most of your circumstances. I shouldn’t have taken your disinterest in living with us as anything more than what it was, and I certainly shouldn’t have assumed it meant that you didn’t care about us, about this relationship. You’re my soulmate, and I love you, and I owed it to you to listen to what you wanted, instead of being so damn selfish. I know I fucked up. I know I have a lot of work to do if I ever expect you to trust me again. And most of all, I know that these are just  _ words _ , and it doesn’t even come close to making up for what I did.”

Oikawa stood, leaving Tobio reeling. He had expected an apology, yes, but nothing—nothing like this. He had assumed Oikawa’s pride would keep him from such a raw confession. 

But maybe Oikawa had found something worth more than his pride. 

Oikawa circled the table and moved toward the hallway. Iwaizumi gently nudged Tobio’s shoulder and he followed wordlessly, stopping when Oikawa rested a hand on the doorknob of a room beside the master bedroom. Tobio had never paid much attention to the door before; it had always been closed when he’d visited, so he’d assumed it was a closet of some kind. 

“This used to be our guest room,” Oikawa said, opening the door.

Tobio took one step inside and froze.

It was as if someone had picked through the innermost recesses of his mind, and splattered the secrets found there all over the 175 square foot space. 

Both the curtains framing the double windows and the trim along the siding were a deep blue—Tobio’s favorite color—complimenting the light cream of the walls. Posters and pictures were tacked up on the wall every few feet, each one intensely special to Tobio: his favorite movie, the book series he and Miwa had read together as children, his friends at the mall and in class and making stupid faces while they raced each other down the street. A large desk dominated the room, its hardwood surface covered in knickknacks. There was a small cat figurine which Tobio was already itching to pick up, a volleyball keychain, and a book on sociological research methods. The beanbag in the corner was accompanied by a weighted blanket and a pillow covered in cartoon milk cartons, the perfect place to stretch out and nap.

Everything in the room had been perfectly tailored to him, from the fairy lights strung up along the ceiling to the azure shag carpet under his toes. 

“This is for you,” Oikawa said from behind him. “A gift. No strings attached. I understand now that you’re not ready to move in. And, um. That’s okay. We can go at your pace. But when you are ready—if you ever are ready, and it’s also okay if you’re not—this will be waiting for you. It’s not an ultimatum. It’s a promise. We’ll be here for you, when you’re ready. You will always have a place with us. And we are never,  _ never _ , going to leave you.”

Tobio fumbled blindly behind him with one hand, seizing the first thing he came into contact with, which happened to be the front of Oikawa’s shirt. Tears stung at the corners of his eyes, blurring his vision. No one had ever done something like this for him. The time it must have taken—the care and attention—he couldn’t even imagine. They’d built him a space in their home, in their hearts, a declaration of love that screamed itself to the sky without an ounce of shame.

“My job?” he croaked out. “You’re okay with it?” He needed to know, now, before he turned around and gave himself over to them again.

“You said it yourself,” Iwaizumi said softly, resting a hand on his head. “You don’t feel the same way about your clients as you do about us. That’s good enough for me.”

Oikawa’s fingers curled around his where they were latched onto his shirt, gentle, as if Tobio were a precious artifact. “And for me. I—Tobio, I’ll spend every damn day for the rest of our lives apologizing if that’s what you need. I’ll do anything. Just, please. Please forgive me.”

“I do,” said Tobio with a gasp. He spun around and flung himself into Tooru’s arms, nearly knocking them both to the floor. “I do, I do, I do, it’s okay—”

“Careful,” Hajime said, steadying them both. “Tobio, do you want to—”

“I love you,” Tobio blurted, because he did, because he needed them to know. “I love you both so much.”

If possible, Tooru’s arms tightened around him even further, and that might have been Hajime’s tears in his hair.

“I love you,” Tobio said again, and again, and again until his mouth was overflowing with the words the same way water broke the banks of a stream. “I love you.”

Maybe this was the biggest fight they’d ever have, and maybe it wasn’t. Maybe this was the absolute lowest point in their relationship, and maybe it wasn’t. Tobio no longer cared. Whatever happened—whatever came between them, Tobio wasn’t worried.

There was a room for him. There was a promise, to work things through, to hold each other close. He wasn’t ever going to be alone again. 

It was enough.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think there will be one more chapter after this! (Remember when I said this would be eleven or twelve chapters long? yeah lmao.)
> 
> Also! I know there are a lot of new writers to this fandom (me included lol) and I'd love fic recs, especially those that haven't gotten as much love. If you'd like to, drop your favorite fic that has less than 1500 hits in the comments, and I'll do the same. My recs are:
> 
> \--https://archiveofourown.org/works/28475634  
> pre-tsukkikage in which the first years have a sleep over and Tsukki is entirely appalled by how much he likes Kageyama. Kageyama is Babie. Yamaguchi gets to be the gremlin bff he was always meant to be. the first years are adorable besties.
> 
> \--https://archiveofourown.org/works/27744676  
> Kageyama-centric, and his reflections on being left behind at Kitagawa Daiichi. he gets depressed about it, but never fear! Ukai hunts him down and Dads him into submission.
> 
> \--https://archiveofourown.org/works/27297826  
> Kuroo likes Daichi. Kuroo decides to ask Daichi to be his boyfriend via powerpoint. the powerpoint is actually INCLUDED IN THE FIC and it is literally so funny. Nekoma and Karasuno team dynamics on point.


	14. Fourteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note, this chapter contains a description of child abuse. If you don't want to read that part, I have marked it out with a *.

(FOUR MONTHS LATER)

If this was domestic bliss, then Tooru was beginning to understand why all the poets were so obsessed with it. 

Tobio hadn’t moved in, not quite yet—but he spent more nights than not curled up in Tooru and Hajime’s big bed, and drowsy mornings seated between them at the kitchen table, sipping his tea until his eyes blinked open all the way. He had a toothbrush above their sink, and a bottle of shampoo in their shower, and a pair of shoes strewn haphazardly over their welcome mat. 

Tooru was being granted the exquisite privilege of learning Kageyama Tobio, and he hoarded each new piece of knowledge like the most precious of gems. A slow blink meant cozy contentment. A wobbly, frightening, barely-there smile meant genuine joy.

And the clenched jaw and thinned lips Tobio was currently aiming his way meant that Tobio was afraid, but had made the decision to forge ahead anyways.

Tooru put his book down and slid his glasses up his nose, watching as Tobio slipped into the living room and curled into the armchair with his arms wrapped around his knees. He’d been expecting this—whatever this was—for a while now. He had never quite forgotten Miwa’s words— _ I think Tobio’s going to tell you something soon . . . listen _ —nor was he fool enough to ignore the nightmares Tobio still tried to hide from him and Hajime, the thin-seamed scars on Tobio’s shoulders that they all pretended not to see.

Carefully. This was going to have to be handled so carefully. Tooru liked to think he’d learnt his lesson, about reckless words and careless cruelty. He liked to think he was kinder, or was working toward becoming so, at least.

Tobio shifted anxiously, and Tooru continued not-watching him, waiting with a predator’s patience. Hajime (dear, dumb, Hajime) noticed nothing of the rising tension in the room, slumped on Tooru’s lap with his eyebrows drawn together into a frown as he paged his way through one of those sappy romance novels he was such a fan of.

Tooru relaxed his face and eased the strain from his shoulders, trying to project the most comforting aura he could.  _ Come on, Tobio _ . . . Tobio had settled into his place as their soulmate, mostly, except for the occasional moments when his eyes went blank with the memories of a horror Tooru could not even guess at. Tooru wanted, more than anything else in the world, to take that horror away from him; to soothe him with reassurance and smother him with love. He wanted Tobio to talk to them, however terrible and painful the conversation might be.

Tooru knew he was going to get his wish, as Tobio opened his mouth and said, “My mom walked out on us when I was nine.”

That got Hajime’s attention, drawing him up from Tooru’s lap with a frown. “Tobio?”

“Shhh,” Tooru hissed, gripping his hand tight. “Let him speak.”

But Tobio didn’t seem to need the encouragement; he hardly even seemed to hear them, knees drawn up to his chin and eyes gone somewhere so far away.

“She and my father were soulmates. He wasn’t the—nicest—person beforehand, but afterwards . . . it killed him. The part of him that was  _ him _ , it died the day she walked out that door. He changed, after. He started drinking. Doing . . . other things.”

_ Other things _ . Tooru’s heart skipped a beat, and he steeled himself for it only to get worse. This was what he wanted, right? Tobio’s trust. So why did he feel as if cold poison had been poured into his gut, mixing noxiously with bile?

*

“He hit me for the first time when I was eleven.” Tobio’s fingers twitched, an unconscious reaction to an ancient fear; a fear written so deeply into him that it had reached its infernal hands through the divide of years to grip him even now. Tooru recalled his flinch, the night they’d fought. The way his features had emptied of everything but animal terror. 

“It was over something stupid. I can’t . . . remember. All I remember is the way his hand looked in the air, coming toward my face. And then the pain. I didn’t understand, at first. There’s always a half-second, between the blow and the sting.”

Hajime had gone very, very still at Tooru’s side, his lips drawn into a dangerous line. Tooru couldn’t stop picturing Tobio at eleven: round-cheeked and tiny, big-eyed and clumsy. 

Bruised. Suffering. Alone.

In the very back of his mind, Tooru opened a door. The room beyond was dark, a burial ground for the worst of his impulses and the most destructive of his thoughts. He was normally conscientious of keeping the door locked and bolted, shutting out the insidious whispers to the best of his ability. Today, though, he bent his ear closer to listen. 

How hard could it be, really, to find one man when Tooru already knew his last name? How hard, to track him down and make him regret the mistakes he’d made?

“It was like that for four years,” Tobio said, pupils blown wide and black behind the jagged fringe of his hair. His voice was soft as night. “Sometimes, when he was sober, he’d even . . . apologize. Promise to do better. But he never did. It was always the same—something would set him off, and then he’d get mad, get drunk, get violent. Miwa and I stayed out of his way as best we could, but when we couldn’t—she protected me. Even after she went away to college, she always planned to come back for me, get me out somehow. She visited often. And one time . . . one time . . .”

Hajime’s hand tightened on his to the point of pain.

“I didn’t even hear her come in. Father had my—my head in the kitchen sink. He’d filled it with water, and was shoving me under, again and again. He thought I’d taken a couple hundred yen out of his wallet. I might’ve. I don’t know. I admitted to it, I  _ confessed _ , anything to make him stop. But he wouldn’t. I thought—I thought I was going to die.”

“Gods,” Tooru whispered, almost dizzy with fury and fear. “Gods, Tobio.” 

“Miwa pulled him off me. I don’t know how. He was big, she’s not. I guess she was even angrier than he was, for once. And then she told me to look away. She put one hand over my eyes, and with the other hand—well. We kept the knives next to the sink. She did—she did a lot for me, you know. But that’s still the kindest thing, I think. That she wouldn’t let me look.”

If Tooru closed his eyes, he could almost see the scene play out in the darkness behind his lids: Tobio, fifteen and scrappy, fighting to breathe. Tobio’s father forcing his head back beneath the water. Miwa, coming home and deciding:  _ enough _ . He’d seen her in a rage; could well imagine the flash of her gunmetal blue eyes as she took the knife and drove it home. 

*

Tooru would have to pay her another visit, to thank her for what she’d done. It certainly saved him the effort of hunting the bastard down and killing him himself. 

Tobio’s hands plucked at the ends of the overlarge sweater he was wearing—one of Hajime’s, Tooru noted distantly. “She was so calm through it all. Until the police came, because she turned herself in. There was no point in lying about what she’d done, or trying to hide it, because she wasn’t sorry. But then they made her go with them, and she—she lost it. I was so . . . scared. I thought I’d never see her again.”

The one person in Tobio’s life who had stood by him through everything; been his rock and his shelter and his anchor, ripped away from him at the time he’d needed her most. Tooru didn’t know Tobio’s mother, but he was beginning to resent the woman on principle alone. 

“She had to go to court, of course. The lawyers said that she got off easy. Only five years for murder, because the judge thought there were, um. Extenuating circumstances. She wanted custody of me, but they wouldn’t let her. They gave me to my aunt and uncle instead—my mother’s brother and his wife. They weren’t awful. Just . . . they didn’t like me very much. Or the fact that I’m polybonded.”

Tobio shrugged, as if being fifteen and knowing his guardians “didn’t like him very much” wasn’t to be remarked on. He’d been abused, mistreated; had his father murdered in front of him by his sister. He’d deserved support, care, love—and received only apathy and disdain. No wonder he’d kept Tooru and Hajime at arm’s length at first. He must’ve been terrified out of his mind, frightened to open up lest they leave him too.

“I left as soon as I could. I knew they didn’t want me. I wanted to go to university, but I had to pay for it myself. That’s why I started work at the hotel. It wasn’t so bad, once I met Shouyou and the others. We, um. Looked out for each other. Then I met you guys in that alleyway, and well . . . you know the rest, I guess.”

Tooru bit his lip until he felt the flesh begin to split under his teeth, heart aching. Despite all that he’d survived, Tobio still looked so small, so young, so terribly fragile. He and his sister had been failed, again and again, by the very people that were supposed to protect them. It was enough to make Tooru’s blood boil—to make him want to burn the whole damned system down in retribution.

“Um.” Tobio’s shoulders hitched up around his ears, his knuckles bleeding white with the force he was using to clasp onto his knees. “Can one of you say something? Please?”

“Oh,  _ Tobio _ .” Tooru scrambled off the couch, his rage taking a temporary backseat to the need to comfort his soulmate. He crouched in front of Tobio, looking up into the other man’s face. Perhaps it wouldn’t be obvious to any but those who knew him best, but Tooru could read the anxiety in the small, tight lines around his eyes. Tooru reached up with one hand and smoothed them away with a thumb. 

“You are nothing short of incredible,” he said softly. “You are so strong, and so brave, and so kind. You endured all of that, and you came out the other side still willing to care about other people. I can’t believe how lucky Hajime and I got with you.”

Tobio’s lower lip wobbled, but Tooru kept going, sitting up on his knees and taking Tobio’s face between his hands. “Thank you for trusting us. I promise—I  _ promise _ —neither of us thinks any less of you for what happened. Your sister did what she had to do. Fuck, I would’ve done the same. I can’t imagine how hard it must’ve been to live with that monster who called himself your father, but I am so proud of you for making it out.”

Hajime’s quiet footsteps approached from behind, and Tooru felt the brief touch of a hand on his shoulder before Hajime plucked Tobio out of the armchair like he weighed nothing at all, settling back down with Tobio perched on his lap. 

“Tooru’s right,” Hajime rumbled, resting his chin on top of Tobio’s head and wrapping his arms reassuringly around his waist. “About all of it. For once. You’re damned amazing, Tobio.”

“Hey!” Tooru screeched, standing up to glare down at the both of them. “I’m  _ always _ right.” 

Tobio and Hajime beamed up at him with identical shit-eating grins, even if Tobio’s was waterier than normal. Tooru sighed before flopping on top of the both of them, drawing a groan from Hajime’s lips. 

“Serves you right,” he said snidely. “You should really appreciate me more.”

“I appreciate you,” Tobio said, all wide eyes and flushed cheeks, and Tooru clutched at his heart with one hand. 

“Shit, Tobio, you can’t just  _ say _ things like that.”

Tobio chuckled, leaning back into Hajime’s embrace. Tooru had the sneaking suspicion he was more than aware of the effect of his seemingly-innocent declarations.

“You okay?” Hajime murmured into Tobio’s hair, placing butterfly kisses at his temple. “Thank you for telling us, but that was a lot to share all at once.”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Tobio said shyly, tilting his head back for easier access. “Thank  _ you _ for listening. I’ve been, um. I’ve been thinking about going to therapy. Miwa gets out soon, and I have Sho and Hitoka and Tadashi and Kei. And—and I have you now, too. My soulmates.”

Tooru and Hajime reached for Tobio in the same instant, their fingers meeting and tangling over Tobio’s sternum, right above the gleaming dark soulmarks that claimed him as  _ theirs _ in full view of the gods and the devil alike. 

Tobio had fought so hard to get to this point, to be with them—overcome a childhood of trauma and an adolescence of neglect; a young adulthood full of uncertainty and danger. Tooru intended that Tobio never have to fight like that again, so that he could finish the process of shedding the heavy armor that had isolated him as much as it had protected him. 

He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Tobio’s cheek. “Yes,” he said, with Hajime’s voice a comforting echo of his own. “Our soulmate.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“For the love of the gods,” Kei said, “would you  _ please _ calm down.”

Tobio turned and sneered up at him. He hated, absolutely  _ hated _ , those few centimeters that Kei had on him. “I am calm.”

Kei directed a cutting glance at Tobio’s right hand, where Tobio had curled his fist so tightly his nails had left crescent-shaped indents on his palm. Tobio scowled and forced his fingers into a more neutral position.

“That’s not any better,” said Kei. Tobio’s hand was now a stiff rictus that made his fingers look like claws. 

“I’m  _ trying _ .”

Kei rolled his eyes, ducking his chin into the scarf he had wrapped all the way up to his ears. “It’s just your sister.”

Tobio huffed at him. “There’s no ‘just.’ My sister’s fucking terrifying.”

“Good. Then we’ll get along swimmingly.”

Tobio shoved his hands into his pockets, trying to angle himself so that Kei was between him and the teeth of the wind. It was damned cold, standing in the exposed empty lot outside the Women’s Prison; made colder by the pit of apprehension lingering in Tobio’s stomach. 

Five years. This moment had been five years in the making, and while Tobio itched to see Miwa in the flesh again, he couldn’t help the anxiety that was eating its way into his bones. What if she’d changed her mind about him? What if she didn’t want to see him anymore?

“Tobio,” Kei said again, clearly exasperated. “Stop it, or I’m going to make you wait in the car. I can’t focus with you bouncing around like that.”

“Make me,” Tobio replied, which ignited a small scuffle that allowed Tobio to momentarily forget about how nervous he was in favor of being irritated with Kei. That had probably been the intention of sending Kei along with him in the first place, Tobio realized as Kei trapped him in a headlock. Damned annoying know-it-all friends. 

Kei released him immediately, however, as soon as the Prison gates began to grind open. Kei stepped back and Tobio took a reflexive step forward, tugging at the edges of his long coat to straighten it. 

Tobio was still staring straight at the widening gap between the gates as they parted, which meant he saw the look on his sister’s face as she took her first step as a free woman.

Miwa didn’t even see him at first, too busy gazing directly into the open sky with a wrenching, broken-open expression. The wind caught her hair and tossed it back, baring the pink flush that traveled up her neck and spread across her cheekbones. She laughed, incredulously, and Tobio couldn’t help the small answering chuckle that bubbled out of his chest in reply. 

It was then that she saw him, and in that first split-second of eye contact Tobio knew he’d been worrying over nothing. He wasn’t sure who started running first, only sure that they met in the middle of the lot with a force that nearly knocked them both over. 

She was now shorter and slighter than him, but it was evident that she’d lost none of the lean strength she’d used to have as she managed to grip him around the waist and lift him into a spin.   
  


“Miwa!” Tobio yelled, bracing one hand on her shoulder. He was too giddy to tell her to be careful.

“I missed you,” she said breathlessly, “I missed you I missed you  _ I missed you _ —”

She put him down only to pick him up again, and they spent a couple moments like that, pushing each other away to get a good look before pulling each other back in again. No longer locked away behind a pane of bulletproof glass, Miwa was warm and present and  _ alive _ . She smelled faintly of lime, her hands calloused but gentle as they shaped the contours of his shoulders, his jaw, his skull.

“Ugh, you’re so tall,” she said critically, once they managed to pull apart for more than two seconds at a time. “And your  _ hair _ . Tobio, who’s been cutting your hair? Now that I see it in person, it’s a  _ mess _ .”

“I cut it myself,” Tobio protested, batting her hands away from his fringe. 

“Well, no more of that,” she said firmly. “And—have you been eating enough? Now that I’m out, we’ll get you on a meal plan or something. I learned how to cook—”

“Miwa,” Tobio interrupted. The corners of his mouth tugged up into a small, helpless smile. It was like being a teenager again, living every day on the edge of danger but still with the bone-deep certainty that his sister would be there to protect him no matter what. 

She caught the amused look on his face and sighed. “Sorry. I forget you’re all grown up now.”

Tobio leaned into her. “I’ll still let you baby me. Sometimes.”

“You’d better,” she said, and turned to pick up the duffel she’d dropped when she’d raced to meet him. Kei had already retrieved it, and stood waiting by the car with his gaze fixed politely aside. Tobio almost laughed at the way he took a step back when she started toward him, cooing about how kind he was, what a nice boy, she was so glad he’d made friends with her Tobio. 

Tobio grinned smugly at him over her head.  _ Payback _ .

Miwa spent the car ride with her head out the window, chattering excitedly every time they passed somewhere she recognized. She still had stars in her eyes when they pulled up in front of Tooru and Hajime’s apartment, Kei going on ahead to leave the two siblings some more time to themselves. 

“You sure you’re okay with this?” Tobio asked, eyeing her. “It’s a lot.  _ They’re _ a lot, even under normal circumstances.”

She laughed in his face. “Tobio, this is like, the best day of my life. I’ll have plenty of time to adjust later.”

Tobio shrugged his acceptance. It was true—she’d be spending the coming weeks with him in his apartment, until the lease expired and Tobio moved in with Tooru and Hajime, while she got her own place and did whatever it was she wanted to do. Go back to university. Get a job. Find the boy whose kiss would make the mark on her ankle fill with color. The whole world was once again hers for the taking. 

Tobio took her hand as they stepped into the elevator together. It was the same hand that had saved him and damned her, but he’d never been afraid of her. He’d always known who bore the weight of her rage, and who her protection. 

When Tobio opened the apartment door, it was Shouyou who greeted them first, flinging himself at Miwa like they were old friends. Then Tadashi and Hitoka crowded up behind him, both of them introducing themselves with eager smiles. Miwa took to them instantly, and Tobio foresaw an increase in visits to his apartment in the future, as Miwa played big sister to anybody she could get her hands on, especially skinny-looking university students. 

Kei was hanging back, standing at the side of an older blonde man who had Kei’s honey-gold eyes. Tobio nodded at him. Akiteru, Kei’s older brother, had shown up a couple months ago, and persuaded (gently bullied) Kei and Tadashi into allowing him to support them through university. Apparently, he’d been searching for them ever since Tadashi’s parents had kicked him out for being Unmarked, and Kei had followed his lover in the face of his own parents’ threats. 

Kei’d had a minor crisis over it. Tobio, an experienced graduate of the school of Younger Siblings Whose Older Siblings Would Do Anything For Them (Even When They Probably Shouldn’t) had talked him through it. Tadashi and Kei were now living happily with Akiteru and his soulmate on the other side of town, having quit their jobs at the hotel together to focus on their studies. 

That wasn’t all that had changed. Neither Hitoka nor Tobio worked at the hotel anymore, either—Hitoka’d landed an internship for design that paid her four times the average countrywide hourly rate, and Tobio’d picked up a tutoring gig inspired by Hajime, charging freshmen a modest fee in return for his services. By all accounts, Tobio made for a decent tutor, if a slightly intense one. 

It was only possible because he’d allowed his soulmates to help him with his bills, but Tobio was no longer concerned about being quite so rigidly independent. Most people left, Tobio knew. But some stayed. And those who stayed—it was alright to accept help from them, every once in a while. Nobody got through it all alone.

The hotel had taught Tobio many things, most of them unfortunate: how to tell when someone had spiked his drink, how to escape an armlock, how to say no and mean it. 

But it had also given him his dearest friends and his soulmates, so he couldn’t truly bring himself to resent the place, even if the all-consuming urge to burn it to the ground did seize him every once in a while. 

“Tobio-kun!” 

Tobio turned at the call, finding Kenma and his friend Kuroo bearing down on him with slightly ominous purpose. 

“We need your help in the kitchen,” Kuroo said cheerfully, tugging him away from the front door by the elbow. 

“But—” Tobio twisted, finding Miwa disappearing into the master bedroom with a nervous-looking Tooru and Hajime. 

“She’s fine,” Kenma murmured. “Just a bit of housekeeping.”

Tobio hesitated but allowed them to shepherd him onwards, soon caught up in making sure the meat was cooked well. After all, Miwa could look after herself. He tried to fetch her once, wanting her opinion on whether to add more peppercorn or not, but was promptly distracted by Shouyou getting up in his face about the recreational volleyball team he’d joined at the local gym. 

“You just have to come next practice,” Shouyou insisted, hanging himself off one of Tobio’s arms and yanking. Tobio kept stirring. Shouyou still weighed about 50 kg soaking wet, though he was adamant he’d grown another centimeter in the past month. “We need another setter to play a proper game. And Daichi-san and Suga-san and Asahi are  _ so nice _ , you’ll see, and, oh! Kiyoko helps out a lot too, and she’s super cool, like BWAHHHH, and Noya-san told me he’d teach me how to hotwire a car. And! Tanaka can do a handstand, isn’t that  _ so amazing _ ? And Ennoshita-san is kinda scary but he’s cool too, and Narita and Kinoshita don’t really talk but when I fell down outside the gym that one time neither of them said anything about it, so—” 

“Fine!” Tobio snapped, no longer able to bear Shouyou being  _ that _ loud  _ that _ close to his face. “I’ll go! But only if Tadashi and Kei and Hitoka come too!”

After all, if one of them had to suffer, then they all did. Those were the rules of friendship.

Shouyou only laughed at him. “They already agreed, dummy.”

He went bouncing off to hug Kenma just as Tooru and Hajime slipped back into the kitchen, drawing Tobio’s attention immediately. For some reason Tobio couldn’t fathom, Hajime was rubbing his cheek with a rueful expression while Tooru was whining about an aching rib. Miwa, coming in behind them, looked inordinately proud of herself. 

Tobio waved his soulmates over, taking shy comfort from the overlapping of their fingers as he passed out the dishes to set on the table. It was a tight fit, all eleven of them, but they made it work, pulling up extra chairs and using stools as seats. 

Tobio sat near the head, with his soulmates on one side and Miwa on the other. Tooru and Hajime were giving him that besotted look again, the one that had been making frequent appearance since Tobio had broken the news about moving in with them at the end of the month. He probably wasn’t doing much better at concealing his own overflowing adoration, if the gagging noise Kei was making was any indication. 

Tobio turned to stick his tongue out at him, but was beaten to the punch by both Akiteru and Tadashi slapping him lightly on opposite sides of the head. Kei jerked away and almost knocked into Hitoka, who steadied herself on Shouyou’s chair while laughing at Kei’s expense. Shouyou caught her almost without looking, continuing his animated conversation with Kuroo and Kenma. Miwa’s hand folded over his, and Tobio turned to grin tremulously at her. 

His heart felt close to bursting, beating in time with the chatter around the table. He’d never imagined he could have something like this, a family he’d found on his very own. It was unruly, and chaotic, and sometimes more than a little unstable, but he wouldn’t trade it for the world. 

Tobio picked up his chopsticks with his other hand and prepared to dig into the food he’d made, the meal being the best expression of his love and gratitude he was capable of. The others followed suit, and Tobio’s thanks was echoed around the table. 

The first bite tasted like home. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, apologies for the later update! I have literally only been back in classes for a week, but it's somehow already kicking my ass. However, I hope this chapter being the longest yet (4400 words holy crap ) makes up for it. 
> 
> I almost couldn't believe this was the last chapter. I feel like I've just put so much work into it shouldn't be over yet, lol. (I am considering adding a smutty one shot on to this. No promises, though, considering I've never written smut and have no idea how to go about starting.) 
> 
> I couldn't help but add Karasuno in there at the end--they'll always be Tobio's forever team, to me, and I wanted to end with the promise of him building that community of some of the first people who truly cared about him in canon. Also, I hoped this was obvious enough, but if you're wondering if Miwa beat Tooru and Hajime up a bit while everyone else helped her along and kept Tobio distracted: yes, that's exactly what happened. It was a group effort.
> 
> To all of you who've read this far: thank you so much for giving this (and me) a chance! It really makes my day every time I see a kudos or a comment or a bookmark. I can't express how grateful I am to have readers who are willing to engage with my silly little, incredibly self-indulgent fanfiction. I hope all of you have a wonderful day. :)


End file.
